by Maples, Kit
The herald said, “You don’t want us to stew them, after all, Lady Lunatic? Why in Hell would the duke agree to fight a merlin?”
“Because the child’s worth more to me than York. Hengist kills me and the city’s safe. Or I kill Hengist and take away the child and the city is safe.”
“Safe from Princess Merlin?”
The Saxons on the wall howled laughter.
But the puzzled herald said, “Who is one lady-knight to frighten us?”
I drove anvil-cutting Urien into the city wall and shattered a stone. The rubble interior of the wall dripped out like blood from a body. The wall cracked and began to slump away.
“Hold, hold, please, Princess Stone Killer, I’ll find the duke!” The herald ran off.
Morgause said from the rampart, “I see you, Merlin, you’re here to kill my child.”
“Yes, I’ll kill him! I’ll kill you, I’ll kill him, I’ll kill anything I must. I’ll scour the country killing to clear the way for Arthur to be lord of Camelot.”
“You’re slave to an absurd dream. You’re a fool or mad.”
“I’m daughter of a king, daughter of a slave, daughter of a beggar. I lived a thousand years and a hundred and forty-four lives. I’m the chosen woman to kill the enemies of Camelot. I’ll kill Mordred, mad or fool!”
Morgause said, “I’m safer here among my enemies than with my countrymen if a monster like you is their champion.”
“You’re a witch well-seated among cannibals,” I said to her. “You betrayed Camelot. I’ll kill you, too!”
Hengist leaped atop the rampart, a huge man with blond-braided hair and blue eyes. He wore a gilt breastplate over mink and ermine. The tails of a red silk tunic hung below his sword belt. Battle scars – the Saxon torquis and phalerae – gleamed on every part of his body not armored or furred. Where his face was not scarred, it was tattooed white.
He dropped on his rump on the wall, hitting the battlement like a millstone crashing down. He dangled his bare feet over the wall.
Hengist said to me, “Why shouldn’t I have my archers staple you to your five foot of Yorkish mud, Briton? Or is it only four foot you’d need as you’re such a puny race.”
He tossed me the massive beef joint he had been gnawing.
“Eat some Saxon feed, Briton. Grow big enough for me to kill you without shame.”
I shielded off the joint, the meat banging on the glass shield like an iron spear point on steel.
Saxons howled and jeered.
I chopped Urien into the wall, breaking more stones. More rubble fill poured out of the wall.
“What’s he doing?” Hengist shouted. “Bring the magicians and fools!”
The herald brought them. They howled and danced on the rampart and pissed down at me.
I hacked at the wall, shattering more yellow stones, rubble gushing out, a crack running up the slumping wall to the parapet on which Hengist sat, breaking open beneath him, wanting to tumble him out of York and onto the hungry point of my sword.
“Come down, you Saxon beast!” I shouted. “Fight me or I chop down this wall and every house and warrior between us until I skewer you as you cower behind your last cannibal pot!”
“Now we’re cannibals?” cried Hengist to his warriors, too startled to shift from Latin to Saxon. “Woden, this woman is unbelievably mad!”
He threw a spear. I shielded it off with a sound like a joint of meat hitting steel.
The Saxons did not jeer this time.
“Shoot arrows at her!” cried Hengist. “Thousands of them!”
A war horn’s cry.
I turned to see the army of the Britons massing to charge across the muddy field, slings and catapults primed, archers stripped to the waist for hot work, Arthur with his knights and the boy Lucan with his lieutenants running across the field for the joy of a sweaty foot race into combat.
Was it York Arthur attacked or me? No more time!
I shouted my war cry, clapped shut my stone helmet and galloped my horse into the wall, Urien leading. The sword shattered the rampart, driving open the crack running up to separate Morgause and Mordred from Hengist.
The Saxons on the upper wall tumbled out of the city and were riveted to earth by the first blast of British archery, feathered shafts howling – not whistling as in the hunt – until they scorched through Saxon steel and fur and into Saxon flesh.
Those wounded who survived the first volley howled agony and terror until seeing the second storm-blast coming down on them. They shrieked like blue-faced Scots. Before the arrowfall stabbed their meat and bones to silence.
Arrows shattered wall stones, squeezed through cracks and arrow slits, overshot the parapet and hissed across the city, each one seeking a pagan soul.
Through the arrowstorm hurtled heavy catapult stones and giant onager spears, Greek fire, the last dead cattle, campfire coals, anything the artillerymen could drag to their weapons.
Flung boulders beat in the walls, buckling them, widening the crack I’d made with Urien, and bounced along the parapet crushing out Saxon lives, ricocheting through city streets grinding down fleeing warriors who still had in their bellies the boiled flesh of Britons.
Beneath this storm Arthur’s army charged, screaming victory cries.
I was the first through the wall-breach. It was move through after Hengist, Morgause, and Mordred or let myself be crushed by Arthur’s charge or skewered on Arthur’s spear.
I rode into York trampling Saxons, slapping aside their weapons, kicking them away from clutching and stabbing my legs, my black war horse tearing off their faces, biting out their bellies, snapping their limbs with his iron-shod hooves.
“Morgause!” I shouted. “Mordred!”
I was berserk with fury to find them, beating my way down narrow city streets, caving in house fronts with Urien, slaughtering any man or woman without a British cast of face.
I fought across brooks and sewage runnels in the cobbled streets, past ale houses and meat houses, the shrines to the too-many gods and goddesses that infest the North, and onto the last city rampart, kicking over into the mud to suffocate the mercy-howling Saxons I’d chased there.
Beyond the city wall and out in the next field was another army.
“Great Jesu!” I groaned, too breathless from battle to shout it. “Must I kill another army to kill Mordred?”
Morgause and the baby ran out of the gate below me in a heaving chariot with a war band of Orkneymen.
They churned through mud galloping toward the distant army. The army with the white flag and red raven crest of Lot, Morgause’s husband, twice brother-in-law to Arthur. Beside Lot’s flag was a gold fighting standard and tied to it with Orkney red ribbons was the crown of the kings of Orkney. Lot had made himself king and Morgause was his queen.
Arthur was there beside me now, on foot, having run through the city to do his killing, bits of people splashed on his armor, war-craze still in his face.
He shouted across to Lot, “Bring in your army, King! Let’s crush the Saxons between us!”
Lot, riding out from his forces to hail his wife and Mordred, shouted, “I have what you want, Arthur, and you have what I want. Neither of us shall give the other his want!”
Arthur banged his chipped sword on the parapet stones and said to me, “Call to him! Tell him that to join me now is to be forgiven all sins if we crush the Saxons today.”
I wiped Saxon muck and mire from my face and from Urien. “Know me now, Arthur.”
“Merlin!” he cried.
“See me kill Mordred!”
I was young and furious, full of nimble energy, and leaped my horse off the city wall, shield-arm and sword-arm outstretched, shouting my war cry, my black war horse shrieking its death cry.
We hit the mud below and tumbled over and were upright, both astonished to be alive, battle-craze in us both, and galloped after Morgause huddling away into King Lot’s army.
I shouted to King Lot, “I’m the woman who broke th
e walls of York! Give me your army to break or give me Mordred!”
Lot wheeled his war horse, closed his helmet with its red-winged crown, drew his greatsword, and charged me.
“Break me, Merlin, if you can – I’m the wall of my army!” he cried.
We ran at each other in a howling fury. Our horses collided in an up throwing of blood and brains, horse skulls crushed one against the other, we two knights crashing down into the thrashing of animal legs and the mud.
* * *
I hauled myself out of the mire and chopped apart the dead horse crushing King Lot. The berserk had possession of me. “Stand, King, to die!” I shouted. I swung Urien.
Lot caught the blow on his greatsword and deflected it as he staggered to his feet, his shattered helmet falling from his head, his shield pinned beneath the fragments of his horse. He slapped on his winged red crown.
“Be a woman of valor!” he shouted. “Give me shield and helmet to fight you!”
I threw him my glass shield. “Take mine,” I said.
I threw him my stone helmet. “Take this.”
I drove my sword at Lot, crying, “Eat this steel!”
Lot shielded off the blow and the counterblow and the re-counter and the blow that followed, staggering back toward his army as I beat him across the field beneath the view of York and Arthur’s army.
Lot was a great defensive fighter, deflecting or slipping past my anvil-cutting Urien. But I was Merlin and a merlin’s rage was in me. I beat him back, back, cutting and bruising him, jeering at him, fever hot in me, until Lot found good ground and threw up the glass shield to fend off the last blow he would take.
A cheer from his army! Clash of drums and of swords on shields!
Lot counterattacked, swinging low and high in Orkney style, driving me left and right and back, forcing me into the mud, forcing me to sweat to save my life, our swords clattering and sparking, whining through the air, he chipping off my stone armor, me shattering his red raven breastplate, striking for blood.
I swung anti-sun-wise, surprising the Orkneyman, bringing Urien inside Lot’s shield and snapping it off his arm. On the return swing, I crushed his red armor and his ribs and drove out of him the breath that kept him alive.
I raised my sword in both hands to stab it through the king’s throat as Lot writhed gasping in the mud.
I heard an alien horn-cry.
Arthur and his war band running to save Lot from me stopped in their charge.
Lot’s war band running to save Lot from Arthur stopped.
The last bloody remnants of Hengist’s Saxons ceased their fighting on York walls.
We all looked north at an immense army of Saxons, Picts, and Scots coming out of the trees, clean steel flashing, swords and axes unchipped by use, every man and woman of them fresh and bloody-minded.
Arthur with his armored shoulder clubbed me away from Lot. He fisted me in the stone breastplate with his mailed hand. Tripped me into the mud. Grabbed up my Urien and said, “Shall I break your Anvil Eater or use it to spit you for Saxon meat, Mother?”
“Spit me! Save the sword!” I shouted.
“I’ll do both,” he said.
Arthur broke the blade over his knee and threw the two pieces of Urien into the mud.
I screamed at the horror of it all.
The new Saxon army came running out of the trees, a herald and pennant trying to outrun the vanguard so that terms could be negotiated on the fly before the warriors of three armies smashed together.
One-armed Bedivere stood over me. “Let a country boy spit your pig, Arthur!” He couched his bloodied spear to stab it through me.
Kay cried, “Hold! We need every sword-hand now, especially a merlin’s.”
Arthur shoved Kay toward the new Saxon army, shouting, “Go talk to them!”
“I’ll buy you an hour, Duke. Get to the city and behind the walls.”
Kay shoved a startled Orkneyman off his horse and galloped toward the enemy herald.
Percival said, “Merlin’s crime is she loves a dream Arthur more than the real Arthur. Let her live, Duke, but cage her like the unpredictable beast she is.”
“Fetch me an iron cage on an iron leash,” Arthur said to his slaves. “That works to cage magicians. Put wheels on it. Put her in it. Never let me see her face again.”
“Arthur!” I cried where I was pinned in the mud under Bedivere’s boot.
The boy knight Lucan ran up leading his war band. He’d fought himself naked. He wore only bruises, boots, and his father’s greatsword.
“That’s Duke Horst over there, Arthur!” he cried. “He has two legions he calls a ‘British army’ blessed by Gurthrygen. How do we fight an army blessed by the king?”
“We fight it and worry about the king’s curse afterward,” said Arthur. “Armor up. Put on this” – he hauled from the mud the glass shield and gave it to Lucan – “and let’s kill more Saxons.”
Lucan looked back at his ruined city of York, at the battle-ruin of dead in the field all around him, and vomited.
“One more fight,” he said, wiping his mouth and strapping on the shield, “and then I want no more war. I want peace. I want children. I want green York, blue skies, and a yellow sun forever!”
“So do I,” said Arthur. “But war has come to us and we must fight it. Go to your army. Stand ready to attack Horst on my signal.”
Naked Lucan ran to his gathering troops.
I looked out of my iron cage. Saxons, Picts, and Scots to the north. King Lot and his Orkney army fleeing away to the east, abandoning us. Hengist’s last few Saxons raising a cheer from the broken city walls in the south as they scrambled to find weapons to fight us again.
I felt my blood freeze in its channels. My heart shivered trying to pump red ice. I had not felt fear fighting through York when the kill-craze was on me. Now I was sober, caged, my broken armor falling off, and everyone was my enemy, including Arthur. Mordred had escaped me. I was filled with sudden terror. How could I make Camelot now?
Worse, I thought, is there no better way than awful war to make Camelot?
Rufus was there outside my cage, peering in at me, cleansing his gladius of Saxon meat. “Why have you caged your mother?” he said to Arthur.
Arthur wrapped around his shield arm the chain hooked to my cage.
“What are you doing with that?” said Rufus. “You’ll fight Horst and Hengist with a slave cage on your arm?”
“Until she or I is dead,” Arthur said.
“You Britons treat your mothers worse than barbarians!”
“Go to your cohorts, Roman, and drive those last Saxons out of York.”
Rufus jumped into his chariot and drove off to collect his Roman captains and the Cornish army. I watched him break into the city and fling Saxons from the walls until once again blond braids flapped in air as Saxon warriors scrambled across the fields to escape Cornish steel.
Kay brought Duke Horst’s herald to Arthur standing in the mud by my cage.
The Saxon herald was a giant, at least six feet tall, with yellow braids springing from all parts of his scalp. He had thrown back his four-horned helmet and draped blue silk across his gilt breastplate. The blue cloth made his blue eyes seem to start from his yellow beard and brows, all of which had grown together. He had slung from his armor the circlets of the dozen British chiefs and kings he had slaughtered in single combat.
“Was heil!” the Saxon cried from atop his equally immense horse.
He jerked his head around to look first east at the runaway Orkney army and then south toward the cries of the twice-defeated Saxons in York.
Then he spoke in careful Latin, saying, “Which is the prince?”
“I’m Duke Arthur.”
The huge Saxon leaned down from his saddle to say, “I won’t insult you by calling you a little man with little hopes and ambitions and probably a very little saxa between your thighs, although those are the insults I’m instructed to make.”
“Thanks
for your courtesy,” Arthur said.
“Nor will I notice publicly that half your army is dead or bruised to uselessness, that only a fool fights two battles in a year and certainly not two in one day, and that the fresh army of Orkney was your only hope of relief and they are running to their piss-ant little island like children fleeing from forest-frights.”
The Saxon herald sucked in an immense amount of wind to fill his huge chest after that long speech. The blue silk veil hiding the arms on his breastplate naming him shivered in the sucking.
“Thanks again,” said Arthur. “I hadn’t expected so fine a courtesy in a Saxon.”
“Well, there you have it. I’m a man of many finenesses.”
The giant leered around at Arthur’s war band of three, as though measuring them for his stew pots. He looked at me in my cage and the chain linking me to Arthur. He was startled.
“Do you mean to fight the Lord Duke Horst chained to a slave cage?” he cried.
“If we fight, that’s how I’ll fight.”
“By all my gods, are you insane?”
“I’ll fight you as I am for my sin in having this monster” – Arthur rattled my chain – “as my mother.”
“Your mother?” cried the Saxon. “You Britons cage your mothers?”
The Saxon turned away his face to not look into that part of the landscape that held me in my cage and mumbled, “How do we defeat a race that cages its own mothers?”
Behind the herald, the vanguard of the new Saxon army began to shout threats at the outriders of Arthur’s army. Arthur’s Cornishmen banged swords on shields in counter threat.
“Before our armies decide to fight,” said Arthur, “you better tell us the names of all your lords so we can seek them in this field to carve them out of life.”
“Do all you mother-cagers have such gaudy mouths?” said the herald. “All right. My lords are Duke Horst – you can see his blue banner over there – and Duke Hengist who is or was over there” – he gestured at York where the only Saxons left to be seen were those being spitted on spears above the city walls – “and Dukes Baldaf and Cheldric, trotting up from the coast with sixty thousand or so.”
