The longer Arthor is alone in the woods, the greater the opportunity for the forces of chaos to defeat him—and with him, Merlin's vision and purpose. Then Morgeu the Fey, with that abominable child in her womb, will be all that remains of Uther Pendragon's sacrifice, a mockery of the future.
Riding atop the mule, Merlin shivers. The sun's heat feels cool. Seed tufts drift onto the river, and the current pulls them away from land, into its own seeking. Somewhere Arthor travels like that, swept along by fate. What can I do?
Deprived of his magic, Merlin's helplessness feels like a cosmic climate. He is far better off not knowing that at this moment Arthor faces death.
A dozen rabid men in motley garb and crude animal hides surround him, charging out of the underbrush. They arrive from downwind while he refreshes himself at a brook. So abruptly and fiercely do they burst through the screen of hedges, there is no time to mount the palfrey. He seizes his shield and sends the horse splashing across the shallow water before whirling about, Short-Life in his hand.
The wildwood gang fans out, encircling their young prey, harrying him with shouts and thrown rocks that make him twist and crouch.
With animal grease glossed on their faces and limbs to fend biting insects, they shine in the strong sunlight as if lit with inner radiance. Their destructive knowing charges the air with their shrieks, their bestial stink, and the agile speed with which they deploy to enclose him, signaling each other with hoots and whistles.
And Arthor realizes that these men are adept at killing.
"I have nothing!" he shouts against their wild cries. "I am a Christian man! I have nothing but my horse!"
His horse they will track down later. Now they want his fine Bulgar saber, that quartz-hafted dagger in his sword belt, and the colorful shield he bears. All these will be theirs, and his sandals, as well.
Arthor realizes he must get to higher ground, away from the uneven footing of the brook. But whichever way he goes, his back will stand exposed for fatal moments. Driving off the palfrey was a mistake; he grasps that now, standing without cover, rocks banging off his shield and smiting the ground around him. Hard as he tries to gauge the array of men around him, the more they seem to shift, sliding past each other, ducking close to pelt him, then hopping backward and darting away. No targets present themselves.
A stone smacks Arthor's shin and drops him to one knee. Immediately, two brigands rush from atop the embankment, one with a knife, the other bearing a sword. Behind him, he hears others sloshing across the brook.
He decides that the water is where he will stand, and he whirls upright and lunges into the narrow stream. Three men meet him there, two with swords, one with an ax, all cold-eyed and wrath-faced, the ropes of their throats taut with screaming.
Arthor begins his death-dance.
Short-Life blurs once over his head in a feint that stymies the three in the water, then arcs backward, spinning him after it and catching the two behind off guard. The saber pierces the man with the knife in the groin and slashes slantwise across the forearm and chest of the swordsman, dropping them both to their backs, bawling with pain. Following the heavy blade's momentum, Arthor pirouettes to his original stance, Short-Life whirring overhead.
The men in the stream back hurriedly away, stunned by this lethal display. A rock punches Arthor between the shoulder blades and throws him to his knees in the water. With a yelp, the axman descends on him, and the shield covers him just in time to deflect a skull-splitting blow. Short-Life gouges upward, penetrates thigh muscle, and twists to separate it from bone.
His weapon caught briefly in his enemy's fleshy part, the others converge. Another rock bashes his shoulder, wrenching him forward. He cries out and shoves hard to get to his feet. The axman collapses before him, thrashing in agony, and Arthor shimmies backward downstream.
Rocks impact around him, and he ducks and holds his shield high to protect his head. Turning quickly, he keeps the brigands at bay. The three men he has cut lie screaming in their blood. Their comrades, infuriated by their unexpected losses at the sword of this beardless youth, attack with renewed frenzy, pelting him from all sides with rocks.
Arthor prepares to die. In the furious moment of this acceptance, he regrets only that he has not yet had his chance to serve the people who reared him and who received from him only scorn and the benefit of his battle rage.
Somehow now, with the war whoops of his killers closing in, that seems just. The unfortunate darkness in him merits this death. And what he has found of goodness does not deserve the love of those he abandoned. He trusts he will find favor in heaven, where Mother Mary will speak for him and where God already knows the depth and significance of his soul.
Like the soul that has already fled Arthor's body, the palfrey flies down the brook, out of the ditch, and into the wind-shaken trees. It runs from the sounds of shouting men, through the forest's glittery darkness, eyes wide-open to everything.
Not far away, on the Roman highway, a faerie flies into the ear of Cei's horse while the warrior squats in the bushes. "Stop!" Cei yells, after the steed pulls free of its tether and heaves through the underbrush. It runs, spirited by the faeries' command, touched by Merlin's wish. It crashes through bushes and bracken until it sees its bright double under the sewn stars of the forest canopy.
Moments later, Cei and a guardsman arrive on their horses and pull up short when they spot Cei's runaway nuzzling the palfrey. "Arthor's horse!"
"Listen—" The guardsman points into the air at the sounds of distant shouting.
"Get the others," Cei orders, and urges his mount forward. He rushes through the forest's tangled byways, following the palfrey's hoofprints in the duff and leaf litter. When he arrives at the brook, he spots Arthor upstream curled under his shield, turning slow helpless circles before an enclosing gang of rock-throwers and swordsmen. He draws his weapon and charges.
At the sight of the galloping horseman, the brigands fan out again. They scramble onto the embankments and stone the rider as he closes in on their prey.
Cei bounds up one side of the brook and bears down on the men gathered there, swatting them with his sword. They scatter, and he dashes across the stream and attacks the enemy there.
Arthor, with his bloodied knees on the brook cobbles, raises his face to heaven. Even as his prayer of salvation begins, he sees Kyner and his band swooping down from the forest, lances and swords glinting. And slowly, weighted with astonishment, he gets to his feet, all he could pray for already come to pass.
Chapter 31: Along the Spirit Trail
Arthor washes Short-Life in the brook, and when Kyner dismounts and sloshes toward him, the boy drops to one knee and presents the saber to him hilt first. "Your sword, Father."
Kyner stands motionless. The blue of his eyes tuck into the leathery seams of his face, peeking out as if unwilling or unable to trust what they see. He takes the sword and motions for Arthor to rise. "Get up, son."
Arthor stands beneath the clangor of steel and screams from the shorn lives of the brigands. Grateful for this battle-miracle, he embraces Kyner.
The old warrior returns the hug, strongly yet with a tentative heart, not yet sure of the character and significance of the change that he sees in his young ward. Not until later, after the brigands have been run down and slain and the warriors regathered, does he sense the profundity of Arthor's transformation.
Cei, with a gloating smirk, leads the palfrey to Arthor. "So this time we took your toasted biscuits out of the fire, eh, Arthor?"
"Thank you, Cei." He looks up at the horseman with a soft smile. His amber eyes glint with happy tears. "You might well have left me to die for all the heartache I've put upon you in the past."
Cei's vaunting sneer fades. "Aye—well—let this serve as a lesson in Christian fidelity. I take care of my own—no matter how untamed. Perhaps now you will show more respect for those better-born. You would be awaiting the Resurrection right this moment if not for me."
"I will
never forget that, brother," Arthor readily admits. Without his sword and garbed in his hempen sack-shirt, he looks more like a boy than a warrior. "And you—and father—have my solemn word, I will keep to my place. And gladly."
Cei shares a surprised look with Kyner. "Clearly, Father, you were right to send him off with Fen. The trouble of it seems to have worked some good with him." He nods to Arthor. "Here's your horse. Let's get back to the cortege."
Kyner utters a silent prayer, thanking God for fulfilling the chieftain's petitions for Arthor's safe return. They ride to the caravan in happy silence, and Kyner asks nothing of Fen's fate or the disposition of Aelle and his Thunderers. The wind in the trees no longer carries the curling echoes of stabbed men. Kyner's warriors file through the stippled shadows, not one of them wounded.
After receiving the subdued greetings of the clan, who have few joyful memories of him, Arthor rides beside Kyner at the back of the procession while Cei takes the lead. How wide the sky looks now to the young man. The road opening into the future seems painted in new colors, and when he tells his adventure to the chief, it feels strange in Arthor's mouth, like a story that happened to someone else.
He holds nothing back. He reveals his heart's reasons for wanting to carry Short-Life into a world that does not know him. He speaks of the immediate passion that seized him when first he saw Melania in Cissa's tent and how he envisioned her as his death, lovely and beckoning, and went to her willingly and would have died then and there under the hacking blades of the Thunderers—but for the lamia. Shaking his head, he talks of the mysterious gleeman and his wise dog.
Kyner recognizes the description of the old, bearded man with deep sockets and eyes of moonstones. Merlin! But he keeps his silence, wanting the boy to tell all of what poisoned and killed his former self and be purged fully of it.
Arthor recounts his journey into the hollow hills. His voice grows soft as he describes the nether sky of sod with its mauve glow that shadowed forth misty swirls of stars and the peach-bright moon. Softer still, he narrates the terrifying confrontation with the Furor, before whose mutilation and ancient, haunted presence it was impossible for him to be brave.
He whispers of his escape from the mad god and the lamia. Finally, like a sleeper mumbling by heart what he carries out of a dream, he retells his seduction by the ghost-double of Melania. When he concludes with the bitter truth of Melania's love for Fen and their shared devotion to each other, his words are empty air.
By then Kyner does not need to hear any more, for that part of the story is so old it was already a song in the first generation of the first people.
"You did well to return, son," he tells the morose boy. "I'm happy to see you with us again—and not just because I have retrieved my sword and my best warrior—but because you've changed for the better. I will thank the Furor for that myself should I see him."
Arthor peers up sharply. "Don't even jest about that, Father."
Camelot appears above the highway with the afternoon's first gold. Noon sun brightens the top girders of the unfinished spires to golden crowns suggesting the work of radiant beings. Music floats in waves from the pastures where round dances and flower frolics engage the crowds between martial displays of archery, ax-throwing and horsemanship. At this distance, the people appear as dark and colorful grains on the tilted fields, brightening and fading under the sweep of cloud shadows.
Cold Kitchen bustles with busy merchants and farmers loading wagons with goods for the festival: amphorae of fruit wine, kegs of mead, baskets of bread, racks of butchered meat, and mounds of vegetables. The whole town is a market.
The sight of so many busy, laughing, shouting people delights Arthor. His sadness at the departure of Melania thins away before the joy of beholding so many happy, productive Britons and Celts striving shoulder to shoulder. And he grins to be among these people—to have a people to be among!
Crosswinds ripple meadow grass on the sheep trails below Camelot, and an ocean of sky expands beyond the construction site—all contributing to a reckoning of vastness.
Arthor remembers his last visit to this place five years earlier and how the huge vista had awed him then. He expected the site would appear smaller now that he was himself larger. Contrary to his expectations, the mountain shoulders heave taller, the summer pastures furl wider, and horizons plunge deeper into an immaculate clarity of river scrawl and forest.
What had been stubby foundation blocks have grown in five years to proud spires, tiers of parapets and tall vallations. The sight of ant-tiny workers moving atop the high battlements lends the prospect a colossal dimension.
Jugglers and musicians greet the caravan as it trundles onto the champaign before the bastion's outer wall. Soldiers, women, and children of Kyner's clan spill out of the wagons to follow pipers and fiddlers and acrobatic tumblers to the playing fields. There, feast tables and colorful gaming tents surround wide, grassy tournament grounds. Children compete in pig runs and tug-of-war, and adults gamble at wolf fights and bruin pits.
Kyner takes Cei and Arthor aside as the others rush toward the festivities. "You're both old enough on this tour of Camelot to come with me to meet and show our respects to the chieftains and warlords," he tells them.
"Father, we've arrived late," Cei complains. "The tournaments have already begun. Look, you can see the sword contests are under way in the upper field. That's my best event!"
"Don't whine, Cei," Kyner rebukes, pulling his son away from his horse and waving for the groom to lead the steed away. "You'll be chieftain yourself soon enough. You must know your peers."
"But my sword," Cei protests, unbuckling the scabbard and holding up the weapon. "The haft has jarred loose. I ruined it in the skirmish with the wildwood gang. I'll need time to find a weapon. And the contest has already started!"
"So it has," Kyner observes with a note of impatience. "But we have not come for the contests alone, Cei. There's the business of the kingdom to attend to."
Cei rolls his head backward in frustration. "But I'm not chieftain."
"You need to see how chieftains and warlords contend in conference," Kyner insists, and strides toward the grand pavilion of yellow canvas with purple pennants that occupies the range before the citadel's main gate. "Come along."
"Arthor does not need to attend," Cei points out, striding beside his father. "Let him go to find me a sword that will adequately replace the one I damaged saving his hide. At least then I will have a weapon ready when we're done palavering."
Kyner nods curtly. "Arthor may do so, if he will."
"I will, Cei," Arthor quickly agrees. "I'll find the best sword for your grip."
"Good." Cei claps the lad on the back and shoves him off. "Then, go. And be quick about it."
"Wait." Kyner stops the boy as he skips off. "Arthor shall go, as he has agreed. But first he, too, shall be presented to the nobles. Now, come along, the two of you."
The pavilion has tent walls decorated with both Christian symbols and curvilinear Celtic emblems, and within its airy, luminous interior a small, mock round table has been erected. Three chairs of Celtic design stand to one side, three of Roman fashion stand on the other. A seventh chair of plain, dark-stained wood is positioned at the table between the two groups, and behind it waits a tall man in midnight blue robes and wide-brimmed hat with bent conical top, both garments subtly stitched with crimson astrological sigils and alchemic devices.
As a ten-year-old, when Arthor attended the last festival, he saw this stark, shadowy figure often in the distance and knows he is the wizard Merlin. When the herald at the pavilion entry announces, "Chief Kyner, his son Cei, and ward Arthor—"and the wizard looks up, Arthor's breath twists in his lungs. Merlin is the very gleeman who led him and Melania into the hollow hills.
The wizard nods to Kyner and Cei and, with eyes like shattered glass, holds Arthor's wide stare, waiting for him to speak.
Arthor finds he cannot untwist his breath to speak. He is not constrained by magic
but by the wide expansiveness of his own surprise, which swallows all his thoughts.
Kyner sees the dizzy look in Arthor's face before the wizard's sapient and silent patience and says nothing, for this is not the place to expect secret disclosures. The moment passes. The wizard gestures to the others, who stand around the table marveling at the work plans for the fortress-city.
Lord Urien, silver braid caught in a gold clasp at his naked shoulder, lowers his chin in spare deference to the Christian Celt. Severus Syrax, swarthy Persian features framed by coiffed black curls, comes forward to greet them with an obsequious grin. While he clasps their shoulders and leads them to the table, square-headed Bors Bona and blond Marcus Domnoni, both beardless and attired in Roman tunics and leather breastplates embossed with lamb and fish symbols, nod. King Lot's eagle-browed stare meet's Kyner's blunt gaze, but the monarch of the North Isles does not deign to offer any greeting to these Celts who have abandoned their heritage.
Arthor does not notice, for he stares at the scarlet-gowned woman beside Lot. Morgeu the Fey openly returns his gaze, and he feels his marrows congeal. This tall woman with her muscular shoulders, flame-wild hair, and small, tight, black eyes in a moony face bears no semblance to Melania. Arthor can hardly believe that Fen might be correct, that this big-boned woman is the enchantress with whom he knew such strenuous passion under the packed stars.
Yet the way she regards him with a defiant glint in the coal-bits of her stare and a small, tight smile hooked sharply at the corner of her mouth tells him this is so.
A flare of fear radiates through him, chilling him to the roots of his teeth.
"Arthor, you're done here," Cei reminds him in a hot whisper, nudging him strenuously with his elbow. "Get going now. Find me a sword. And make haste."
Arthor jolts free of his fright. He glances at Merlin, who has returned his attention to the scroll of work plans, then he looks to Kyner. The chief has been led to the table by Severus Syrax and leans stiff-armed over the designs, listening to the wizard.
The Eagle and the Sword (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 2) Page 31
