by Maples, Kit
Everyone yearned to be back in safe Kaerlindcoit or, better, in their distant Cornish villages. But who knew how to find home from this far north country?
Everyone dreaded the coming battle with the cannibal giants from Saxonia. But happy Arthur with his tiny war band and the sneering Romans in gaudy armors hooted and howled hungry for combat, flapping their spear feathers as they raced their horses north, clattering swords on shields to frighten the villages they passed, boasting how they would carve the souls out of every Saxon they met on the field.
Arthur jumped off his horse to piss against a tree. I stood guard with Urien and the screaming shield.
“I’ve thirteen battles to fight, Mother,” he said. “Then this misery of war is over and I’ll have my son and my orchard. But how do I count them?”
“Thirteen? Who told you that? I don’t remember thirteen battles.”
“You don’t remember much anymore,” Arthur said, lacing up and swinging into his saddle. “You’re nearly my age now and you’ve forgotten too much. It’s thirteen before I die. I saw it in a dream last night.”
I was frightened. The boy was receiving revelations but not through me.
I hastily counted up the past and said, “You fought thirteen battles in Cornwall…”
“Skirmishes. Brawls. Maybe two real battles.”
“Then what makes a battle?”
“The size of the army you lead and the size of the prize. York will be my third or maybe fourth or second. We have to hurry things along or Mordred will be a man before I take him from Morgause and too big to dandle on my knee in my orchard.”
He laughed. I couldn’t.
“I’ll count your battles for you,” I said.
I’d count them my way to make Camelot come the quicker.
* * *
At last, after six days’ march, we howled down on some wandering Saxon scavengers who threw their spears at us and ran into the forest to cower there like blue-faced Scots.
“Can we count this as a battle?” I cried to Arthur, sweating for the jolly exercise, my horse thrashing through the trees snapping at the fleeing Saxons.
Arthur and I, the van ahead of the van, broke out of the trees and saw the yellow stone walls of York beyond a field of tents, meat-smoke, and war rubble.
This magnificent yellow city was the greatest power of the North. Nearly a country unto itself with its princes and princesses intermarried with the kingly families of Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Orkney.
Beneath the walls were the camps and catapults of Gurthrygen’s siege army. Soldiers stopped flinging rotted cattle over the walls to gawk at us two newcomers.
The Saxons on the walls jeered and fired arrows that fell short of us. The Saxons bared their rumps at us. They flung over the walls the bones of the York men and women they had stewed for insult.
Slowly, first by wandering pairs and then in marching scores, the Cornish 6,000 came into the field behind us. The siege army cheered. The Saxons covered their rumps, strapped their shields over their cloaks, and wasted no more arrows.
“Where’s your captain?” Bedivere shouted to the siege soldiers.
“Here I am.”
A boy wiped mud from the sword he had been using to fell trees and held it up. “I hold the sword of the lord general my father who was sent by the king to make siege.”
“Where’s your father?” said Bedivere.
“Those were his bones just dumped over the city wall. I’m Lucan. Who are you?”
Between Arthur and me was the tie of blood and hope but between this boy Lucan and the girl-slave who had been Brynn was the tie of parent and child. It was more than I could bear to see the boy who would become the man Galabes who would choose me to become Merlin to create Arthur.
I jumped off my horse, threw out my arms to the boy, shouted, “I’m Merlin!” and kissed him.
Lucan was startled.
“Young beauty,” he cried, “you can’t be the hag Merlin!”
“Great gods,” laughed Percival. “Is our Lady in love with this boy?”
Lucan wiped my kiss from his lips.
“We bring your new battle commander,” Bedivere said to Lucan, snatching up Arthur’s red dragon shield with ducal crown.
Lucan was startled again. “Lord Duke of Cornwall, the king’s brother? I’d be happier to have his Cornish army than another glory-greedy prince.”
Bedivere gestured at the trees out of which came the army.
Lucan cheered and in his joy kissed me again. A quick, boyish kiss.
Arthur clapped his ducal crown on his conical helmet and Lucan was startled one last time.
Lucan grabbed Arthur’s hand. “I’ve kissed only one man’s hand, Duke – my father’s when he slapped me and made me knight and his lieutenant in this battle. Show me you’re champion in Britain, show me there’s one champion left to this unhappy country, and the only reward I’ll claim from you is the ground I need to stand on to fight back to back with Arthur!”
He kissed Arthur’s hand.
“You’ve a boy’s romantic heart,” Arthur said to him, “but you’ve made a man’s job of York. Fight with me in this and become my comrade for life.”
Impatient Rufus in his saddle said, “Too many kisses, too little killing. Look there.”
The Saxons lined the city rampart with a score of York women and began to lop off their heads like reapers in harvest time, heads spilling down among the besiegers who shouted and ran from the walls.
The Saxons jeered, jeering themselves hoarse. Then they sat on the ramparts with legs hanging down, shields drawn up to their eyes, watching the Cornish 6,000 fill the field through the last of the day.
Night. The army set out bonfires to attract its tail, still far down the road, and to guide in stragglers and foragers. The night was full of shouts for “Meat!” “Wine!” “Priests!” from the Britons and choral jeering from the Saxons on the city walls. The jeers were in incomprehensible Saxon and equally incomprehensible bad Latin, so we took no offense.
Duke Arthur and I, in full jangling array of steel, leather, gold, and silk, made rounds of the campfires, cheering on the warriors, joining in their boasts and songs, clapping swords on shields in toast, praying with the priests and Druids, supervising installations of catapults and onagers, overseeing the cutting of battering rams and the manufacture of huge leather shields to fend off boiling oil. By the dead part of night, we were exhausted and the army at last was put to bed.
Rufus came into Arthur’s tent decorated with its ducal horse tail banners. He took off his ugly wig, massaged his bald head, and said, “We’ll have good battle tomorrow.”
Rufus used a finger to lick salt from the food plate Arthur held. “I can’t buy this city for you as I bought half of Cornwall, Arthur. I sent in ransomers. They came back as pieces flung over the walls.”
“Whyever would Hengist want to keep this dreary cold place?” said Arthur.
“Hengist is a man of dreary cold Saxon forests, there’s your answer. He means to keep York as his capital after he divides Britain between himself and Horst.”
“Where’s Colgrin?”
“Coming,” Rufus said.
“Still coming?” I said. “He’s the slowest man on Earth.”
“Can we kill this little army in York without a time-wasting siege before we face Colgrin?” said Arthur, yawning.
“You’ll have to,” Rufus said, “because you can’t ‘kill’ them united.”
“That would make a battle fit for epic and saga, wouldn’t it?” said Arthur, pulling off his boots and throwing himself on his bed.
“A battle fit for Greek poetry,” said Rufus, “and as unbelievable as all those other Greek tales. What’re you doing, Duke?”
“Going to sleep.” Arthur snuggled under his furs.
“Now? With dawn and the battle two hours away?”
“No time to sleep when the killing starts.”
Arthur rolled over and began to snore.
“The boy-duke has his logic,” Rufus said to me.
I went out of the tent with Rufus. It was spring everywhere else in the world but here. Cold and a threat of ice. Rufus clapped the wig on his head and wrapped his cloak against the chill.
“Tell me what you think tomorrow will be,” I said.
“Cornwall was a brawl. York is war.”
Rufus shivered, only half from the cold.
“Tomorrow will tell us if we follow a champion or a fool, Princess. When war begins, the terror of it stops the blood in a man’s veins. If he can make that cold blood move again, he’s a hero. If he can’t, then he’s only human and he’s going to die and us with him. In disgrace because we followed the fool.”
Rufus bundled tighter against the cold.
He said, “But one battle’s only one battle. What will Arthur do about Horst?”
“He’s Gurthrygen’s worry.”
“I hope not! Giving away Kent to Horst, what a stupidity. Now Horst wants to be the king’s first minister.”
“A Saxon chief minister?”
“We’ve a Saxon queen,” said Rufus. “Why not? He wants the king to confirm him as the ‘British Duke of Kent.’”
“I can puke!”
“I heard the story from Brittany, so it must be true,” said the Roman. “They lie less over there.”
“Does Arthur know this?”
“I told him. As I told him Brittany’s king prepares to follow the Saxon furrow across the sea to invade us. To recover Britain for ‘true Britons,’ as he claims.”
“What did Arthur say?”
“Our boy-duke believes himself a hero. You raised him that way, Lady. Civil war, Breton invasion, invasion out of Sax-land, Scots, Picts, Irish. It’s all epic for him. It’s what a hero craves to keep himself a hero, isn’t it? You damn British think too much like the Greeks.”
“Trojans,” I said. “We come from Trojans.”
“Just as dull-witted. Look how they ended.”
We squatted by a sentry’s campfire to warm ourselves.
“It’s all too much!” I said. “How’s Arthur to put it all right?”
Rufus thought a moment and said, “You really aren’t much of a merlin anymore, are you? You can’t ‘see’ anything ahead, can you?”
“Not much.”
Rufus rubbed his hands in the fire’s heat. “There’s more.”
“More trouble?” I cried.
“More of the things that must worry kings. Because they’re more important than kings or war.”
“What’s more important than kings and war?”
“The old forests are dying.”
“We’re to talk of trees and muck?” I said.
“I see people eating peacocks because there’s no pork. Pork is every man’s staple, not peacocks. No forests means no acorns means no pigs.”
I thought about that.
“Where do you buy pepper these days?”
“Who cares? Salt is enough for any man or woman.”
“There’s no more pepper because the spice merchants in China have drained every gold coin out of our world. When did you last see the emperor’s face on metal?”
“The world is coming to an end because we can’t feed pigs or buy pepper?” I laughed. “Don’t be comical, Roman, you Romans don’t do comedy well.”
“Not merely here in Britain. Rome, too. Europa. All the world. The gold is going out of everywhere, acorns, too, or the equivalent.”
I sat there confused and shivering.
Rufus said, studying me, “No, you’re not much of a merlin anymore. Beautiful, yes, but too little magic. And less liver of thought than we must have from you.”
We squatted there staring into the campfire, glum and desperate together.
At last, Rufus said, “Can Arthur make Camelot?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
* * *
Gloomy dawn. Too many clouds, too little light, but enough to see the gaudy Saxon shields lining the parapets of York. Behind those shields gleamed spear points and metal helmets, painted and feathered. Steam rising from pots of boiling oil.
I stood in the chill, muddy field measuring the enemy and watching Bedivere ride beneath the city wall, jeering up at the barbarians, inspecting damage done the wall by Lucan’s siege engines.
“Name your crap-stinking prince!” a Saxon herald called down to him, in fair Latin.
“Arthur!” shouted Bedivere.
“Arthur who and what?”
“Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, Duke of Cornwall and Dux Bellorum to King Gurthrygen.”
Across the field, at Arthur’s tent, Kay raised Arthur’s red dragon shield for the city to see.
The Saxon herald called, “Is a boy all that Britain can send against Hengist, a veritable god of battles?”
“Apparently,” said Bedivere as, with his spear, he tested a broken stone in the wall. It fell out of the yellow wall and shattered at his horse’s feet.
The herald and the Saxons behind their shields watched this destruction of the first stone in their protection.
Bedivere stabbed out more cracked stones, the Saxons watching him and assessing what he assessed.
The herald shouted down grotesque insults. The Saxon warriors jeered.
Bedivere said, “Send out your speakers, Herald. Arthur will hear them. Or blow your war horns and let the slaughter begin.”
Bedivere slung his shield across his back and galloped away from York and the spears flung after him.
Chapter 7 – York Battle
Morning sun rose into the gray clouds, making a deeper gloom. Arthur’s army ate its grain paste breakfast, strapped on its armor, pissed, wandered the fields bored and kicking clods, waiting for enough sunlight to fight. All of them gloomy at the prospect of attacking such a massively fortified city. Arthur and his war band lounged around his tent, drinking the army’s best wine, waiting for the Saxons to decide what to do next, in accord with the protocol of siege.
A shout from the walls. The herald was there, holding up Duke Hengist’s shield. Beside him he had a woman in bright silks, and her executioner.
Percival said, “Jesu, will they murder another Briton?”
He took a hollow reed from his packs and used that to focus his eye on the woman.
“Look at the sign on her breast,” he said. “The Orkney red raven!”
I grabbed the reed and sighted but it was Arthur who identified her: “Morgause!”
Morgause had in her arms a boy two years old.
Arthur cried, “My son!”
“Mordred?” I was too stunned to believe my luck! “She’s got Mordred?”
That name was for me like the sudden sleeptime seizing of my soul by a demon. I was fire. I was rage. I was a merlin gone mad. I leaped onto my horse and ran the beast toward the city wall, shield-less, sword-less, helmet-less, shouting to the Saxons, in Latin, “Cut her down! Kill the child! Kill the child!”
The Saxon herald said, in passable Latin, “What a bloody-minded lot, you Britons. I want to trade her for advantage and you say kill her?”
“Drop me the child! Give him to me! Or throw it into your stew pots!”
The Saxons rattled their shields in protest at this barbaric suggestion, though they would have eaten the full-grown mother.
Bedivere and Kay, in armor and with my checkered shield, rode up, cursing me for a fool.
Bedivere cried, “Are you mad, Lady?”
“That child’s Mordred!” I shouted.
“Harness!” Bedivere said, throwing me my shield.
“Is that Arthur? Who’s shield is that?” said the herald, puzzled.
“It’s Princess Merlin,” Bedivere said.
“Is she worth any sort of ransom, do you know?”
Kay banged sword on shield. “If you want to come down to take her, she’s worth half the kingdom to you.”
“I’d happily come down to neuter you, Sir Loudmouth, but Duke Hengist likes his jaw-jaw before
war-war. He’s a civilized man that way.”
I cried with the voices of all the merlins in me, “Kill the child or make war now!”
“What a voice you have when you use it!” said Kay, hauling back on his startled horse.
The herald was appalled. “That’s the strangest suggestion I’ve ever heard before a battle. Get away, get away, you barbarians!”
Arthur blew his calling horn. Bedivere and Kay took my reins and led me galloping back to the command tent, me raving in voices, panicked and out of myself with blood-hunger, the child Mordred an horrific image in my eyes and liver.
Arthur shouted at me, “I won’t cut you down, Mother, but lose yourself in my army. Out of my sight! Lose your life today or tomorrow I hunt you like vermin and cut out your murderous soul…”
“That child is Mordred!” I cried, the killing fever in me, sweat bursting from my face.
“He’s my son and damn your myth and memory.”
Arthur turned his back on me.
“That child’s your assassin! He’s the destroyer of Camelot! Are you too blinded by your power to make one wretched baby you can’t see what everyone else must plainly see?”
“See what?” said Kay, Bedivere, and Percival together.
Arthur went into his tent.
Sweating, slavering, mad with fury, I shouted, “Sobeit, Lord of Fools!”
I threw down my gaudy checkered shield naming me Arthur’s comrade-in-arms.
I jerked around my horse and galloped to my tent. I unwrapped my original colors, arms, and armors – the stone armor of my days as a love idol, the glass shield awarded me by Sir Lucan the moment I killed him, and the greatsword Urien.
I called to my slaves to strap on my harness. Pulled on my stone helmet. Grabbed up war club, ax, spears, and daggers. Swung onto my black stallion. Strapped on Lucan’s glass shield.
I raised Urien to flash in a shaft of sunlight cutting through the clouds and galloped through the army to the city wall shouting my war cry.
I shouted up to the Saxon herald, using Latin, “Merlin calls to Hengist, the mindless lord of a half-wit race, the hellhound come to end all that makes life worth living, the infection of Earth soon to be an affliction of Hell because Princess Merlin is going to send him there, to come out to single combat for possession of Morgause and her child!”
