by Maples, Kit
I realized I still had the Brittany greatsword in my hand. I slid the blade into its fleece. It was no use against a creature like Fyfas.
I said to him, “Name yourself, Demon.”
Fyfas spoke in a Latin voice sweet as a child’s, saying, “Lady Merlin, Child Merlin, Princess of Mystery, don’t you know me?”
Dunwallo weighed his war club and said, “Say your true name out into the world so I know you before I crush the life out of you!”
As Camelot in the vision given us by the book of Weird had grown out of the single mud brick Arthur had cut to rebuild this ruined village, an immense figure grew out of Fyfas, feeding on the deadgloom of the spoiled village.
Fyfas grew and withered into a giant, seven feet tall but shrunken and crippled by battle wounds and disease, with pendant earlobes, sagging nose and chin, tattoos on his chest and face inlaid with rubies, yellow hair, colorless eyes, fingernails stained with the blood of his cannibal victims.
“Colgrin!” I said, a fright-fury coming into me.
“Do you see me, too, Arthur?” said the monster.
“I see you.”
Colgrin put out his withered-giant hand.
“Give me the World Sword, Arthur, and I give you your life, your kingdom, your people, everything you can want. More! I’ll give you Rome as my slave-emperor. Give me Excalibur!”
Arthur drew the sword, its flash in the nightgloom a signal to the Round Tablers, each of whom drew a gleaming greatsword to power light around us.
“With Excalibur,” Arthur said to Colgrin, “any man or woman can be master of the world.”
“That’s why I’m here on this dreary little island,” said Colgrin, saliva drooling from his blue-painted, ruby-encrusted lips.
“Use the sword to kill this monster,” Dunwallo whispered to Arthur.
What do I do, Mother? Arthur said in his soul’s voice.
“Give Colgrin the sword,” I said aloud.
“Give it up?” screamed the checkered shield slung over my back.
Dunwallo cried, “You’re a traitor, Merlin! He’s the Anti-Christ!”
“You fools,” Colgrin said. “I’ll suck the last breath out of each of you if you don’t give me the sword.”
Colgrin’s fingers stretched the distance from Colgrin’s hand to the blade.
Arthur made to drive the sword into a stone.
“Hold, Little King!” said Colgrin. “Stab the sword into stone and I’ll scour the island to burn every Briton, every half-Briton Saxon, every quarter-Briton Scot, every eighth-Briton Pict. I’ll kill Britons throughout Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Denmark, and Gaul. There won’t be a Briton alive in Jerusalem or Rome or Persepolis or Timbuktu to curse your memory. I’ll kill without remorse. Come, Son Arthur, put Excalibur into my hand and let all those live!”
Arthur glanced at me.
I said, “You’ve decided.”
“Good!” said Colgrin, opening a withered hand for the sword.
Arthur put Excalibur’s hilt into that stretching, giant hand.
Colgrin flashed the sword around his head once, twice, laughing in his victory, Colgrin growing huger and more immense, expanding to encompass the village and forests, sucking up the sweetness of the night such that it pulled at Arthur’s mail, at my scabbard, at Dunwallo’s crosses, making a shrieking song of triumph, overwhelming the surrounding bright blades of the Round Tablers, Dunwallo tearing his clothes in his rage, my shield’s faces shrieking their misery.
Arthur shouted to me across the rising shriek of the sucking away of life’s sweetness, “Does he have true possession of my sword, Merlin?”
“The sword is his,” I said, “if he can keep it.”
“Can you keep it?” Arthur said to Colgrin.
The monster cried, “Have it say its name, Arthur. Make the sword admit I possess it!”
“Speak your name,” Arthur said to the sword.
Excalibur! it said.
The name roiled and howled and the blade whipped itself into a contrast of flashing white hot and dank cold black.
Faces appeared on the steel – a child Branwynn and Llew the Swordmaker, a beggar knight Galabes, a mourning witch queen Morgause, a great silent hound named Caval, the child Mordred, then sizzling gloom.
The sword spoke, I am Excalibur!
“I know you, I know you!” cried Colgrin, struggling to hold the hot and frigid sword in the sudden howling wind.
I am the daughter of Caliburn!
“Of what?” shouted Colgrin.
And Caliburn the son of the daughter of the son of Saffron Death, the sword of The First Caesar!
“Of who?” shouted Colgrin, raising an immense shield to defend himself against the racketing wind and the whipping sword that was in his own hand.
Arthur reached into the rack and clatter of the night storm and touched Excalibur.
The sword shriveled to gnarled iron and then to splinters and to rust.
Colgrin screamed, racketing the world.
He dropped the burning rust from his withered hand.
Excalibur! Arthur said, reaching into the rust cloud spinning in the air.
He drew out Excalibur whole and alive.
Colgrin shrieked again and expanded into the night and was gone, leaving behind the half-whispered question, “What demon made this merlin king?”
The night was sweet again with the scent of all Britain.
The Round Tablers got up from where they had been flung by the wind, staggering in their standing, shifting their armor and scraping mud from their shields, sliding away their swords.
* * *
In the fresh silence, Arthur said, “Where are Colgrin’s three hundred thousand?”
I pointed toward the yellowing horizon that glowed all around us.
“If that isn’t the morning sun rising everywhere at once,” I said, “then it’s the campfires of his horde.”
Arthur stood over the brick he had made from the village mud.
“Here’s the founding of Camelot,” he said to us. “This dreaming brick is all of our power in the battles to come. Defend it today and tomorrow we plate it with gold and build a New Troy on top of it.”
The Round Tablers cheered.
Arthur pointed to the brightening horizon. “There’s the gleam of the hundred thousand campfires of Colgrin’s legions. Go to your divisions. Organize the army for battle.”
“What kind of fight, Arthur?” said Bedivere. “On horse, on foot, defensive, offensive, here or over there on the horizon?”
“We find Colgrin. We go wherever he goes. We attack him in parts, gnawing on the weakest divisions with our strongest divisions. We raze his villages and enslave his peasants to deny food and shelter to his armies. We carry on until we’ve gnawed Colgrin to eating size and then we gulp him down and crap out his bones and treasure.”
The Round Tablers cheered again, happy warriors happy for a fresh fight. I cheered with them.
But Arthur stared in a gloom at the brightening horizon.
Dunwallo said to him, “King, join the cheers. Make a happy sound for loving war. We’ll have grand slaughter today and a high victory.”
“War is an ugly thing and I don’t love it,” Arthur said.
“But you love to kill Saxons, surely?”
“Not even them. I want to sit in my orchard at peace, dandling my sons on my knees.”
“Is that really all you want? You can be the greatest king of the age, conqueror of the world!”
Arthur drew Excalibur from its fleece and said, “I’d give this sword back to the stone from which it sprang if I could trade Excalibur and Camelot for an ordinary man’s peace with sons and wife.”
Excalibur hummed its name.
“What Pendragon ever said anything so preposterous?” cried the bishop.
“Then bless me, Bishop. Make me as happy as you to slaughter Saxon farmers, Saxon women, Saxon children.”
“I can’t bless you in that!”
“The
n purge my soul because that’s what war is. That’s what I have to do.”
“Of course I’ll purge your soul for that…”
“You savage fool,” said Arthur, shoving Dunwallo aside to haul on his battle armor, his Goswhit and his Pridwen.
“What do you care for Saxons?” I cried, appalled at this stunning weakness in my king.
“Listen,” Arthur said, as though only he and I could hear.
“To what?” I said, straining to hear.
Arthur crossed both our chests with Excalibur.
I could feel-hear the blade humming.
What are you singing? I said to the sword.
“Listen!” said Arthur.
I listened.
I heard the morning breeze and shouts of our breakfasting army. Then I heard some strange, faint, and distant music.
A song to be heard only in the souls of young men and young women:
This is the warrior’s quest,
To discover that pride ends in dust
But life endures all things.
Proud Troy died and made Britain.
Proud Rome died and left Camelot.
Prouder Arthur died and what did he leave?
I said to the sword, What did Arthur leave? Tell me!
Lucan leading his muddied York cavalry broke through the trees and galloped into the ruined village, jumping from his saddle.
“Arthur! Duke Horst brings you sixty thousand Saxons to slaughter!”
“Where?” said Arthur, sheathing Excalibur and flinging me out of the song’s reverie.
I stood there staggering and stunned, like a woman drunk on too great a dream.
Sing me the song again, I said to the sword. But Excalibur would not.
To hear that song once is enough for any young man or woman to know what must be known.
“Horst is due east,” Lucan said to Arthur. “In ranks six deep with cavalry on the flanks, like a marching Legion. A hundred war chariots, ballistas, mangonels, every other fighting machine...”
“How far in time?” I said, my liver and soul filling with fright for a future I could no longer remember.
“A half day if we wait for him here, Lady Merlin,” Lucan said.
But Lucan had misunderstood. My question was not for him but for Arthur. Yet Lucan had given me the answer.
Arthur looked across fields and forest and into each of the campfire groupings of his army where men and women squatted eating breakfast gruel, burnishing their weapons and armor, dreaming of peace and home.
“Give them five minutes more of ordinary life,” he said to Bedivere, “then follow me to war.”
Arthur swung onto his war horse Llamrei. “Mother,” he said, “will you ride beside me today?”
“Always,” I said.
I clutched Arthur’s stirrup and walked beside Llamrei out of our one-brick Camelot until I found my own slaves waiting with my battle horse prepared, armor cleaned, weapons ready, the faces on my screaming shield gnashing their teeth in anxious hunger to kill Saxons.
Arthur kissed goodday and goodbye to his wife and sons.
He put his hand in a benediction on the Round Table still in its cart. “When will I see my arms appear on you?” he said to the Table.
With our helmets pushed back on our heads for comfort, we rode east through the last campfires of the army of the Britons, returning the warriors’ cheers, and into the cold, dank forest. The forest haunts of the night had barely slipped away to their infected nests. Morning slanted through the branches.
We were alone.
I felt wonderful going to battle again beside my Arthur.
He said, startling me, “Tell me if we’re to win this battle today, Mother.”
“You’ve seen the Book of Weird – you win everything forever.”
“I’ve seen the Saxon Weird, not British Fate. Tell me my Fate.”
“What can I tell you? Nothing! I’m a girl now, younger than you. The merlin in me is almost emptied out. I’m good only for carrying a sword and spear in my king’s army…”
I wanted to weep in sudden misery.
“Am I the king to build Camelot? Tell me that, at least.”
“You’re the man who must build Camelot.”
“Answers and no answers,” Arthur said, with a bitter laugh.
I said, with a young woman’s earnestness, “I tell you, Arthur, people for a thousand years ahead will say, ‘If Arthur marches with me, I can march through all the evils of the world unbeaten!’”
“You can see that far ahead?” he said with a laugh. “You have that much merlin left in you?”
True! I could see nothing ahead but what I hoped to dream.
I said, “You are Arthur who has Excalibur, the Round Table, and Guenevere. What else do you need to make Camelot?”
“My sons.”
“Gawain and Mordred,” I said, the last name sounding strangely bitter to me.
I pushed away my puzzlement in a young woman’s natural excitement for the battle ahead.
Arthur saw my joy and rattled his feathered spear on his shield and shouted “Camelot!” until battle hunger came into his face.
I rapped my Brittany greatsword on the screaming shield, shouting, “Camelot!”
We charged through the trees to break out into rolling fields across which came the immense surge of the Saxon horde shouted on by Duke Horst, possessor of the battle ax called The Morgengrabe he believed would make him king of Britain.
Behind us the British army, paltry compared to Horst’s numbers, scrambled out of the trees to gawk across at the vast enemy formations.
Chapter 10 – The Morgengrabe
Arthur gave his warriors the usual before-battle feast of cold meat to gnaw and Raetian wine to suck down. Our own skirmishers jeered at and drove away the first Saxon rovers. But they came close enough to report to Horst we were a swarm of fighting men and women and not merely dust devils or Horst’s drunken hallucination. We waited for happy combat.
After the sun had passed zenith, the vanguard of Horst’s army swarmed up the last rising ground toward us and stopped. The Saxon army surged up behind it as if the vanguard were a scorpion drawing in its stinging tail.
A single arrow arced out of the Saxon horde. It rose silently into the blue and rainless sky, rolled over and fell with a heavy gasp into the dirt beside Arthur’s war horse. Llamrei crushed the arrow with its hoof, looked toward the Saxons, and shrieked its war cry.
Saxon war horses screamed their cries in return.
Our war horses had chosen the hour of battle.
The Saxon army rolled forward, dragged toward combat by its eager horses.
My shield looked out on the Saxon tens of thousands against our handful of warriors and screamed its panic, making the Saxon vanguard stagger in shock.
I raised my spear to attack.
“Let them come to us, let them come!” Arthur shouted to his army. “Let them wear themselves out coming to us. The slaughter will be easier.”
“Walk your horse,” he said to me. “Shake out your battle-stiffness, Mother. Then we’ll fight them.”
Impatient as I was, I did as Arthur ordered. I let my horse stamp about the dusty field. I chased away Saxon skirmishers for exercise. I shook out my shield arm. I re-settled my armor. I tested the quick slide of the Brittany greatsword in its fleece scabbard.
When I got bored with all that, which was soon, I walked my horse back to Arthur and said, “I don’t suppose it’s time to fight, my King?”
“Are you that ready, Girl Warrior?” Arthur said, laughing.
“I’m always ready!” I cried.
“Here, cross steel with me and let’s make battle.”
We crossed swords overhead and the army cheered us, shouting, “Hero Jesu, protect us all!”
I said, in the old pagan prayer, “If Annwn craves us, Annwn must have us. But if Camelot’s claim is stronger, we’ll live forever!”
“A good half-Christian prayer,” said Arthur.
“I’m only a good half-Christian.”
We shouted our war cries.
Our horses screamed fury.
Arthur slapped shut his helmet Goswhit with its red dragon crown.
I settled my screaming shield.
We attacked.
The Saxons howled in surprise and wonder to see two lone knights charging into their vast horde.
But out of the trees behind us – to Saxon eyes as though materialized from shadow and dust – came the first battle line of the army of the Britons.
Banners and pennants, chanting priests with smoke pots, cavalry clattering and flinging their spears. Feathers and streamers, horned helmets, glistening gilt on steel, infantry howling Latin curses, maces and axes. A furious rising cloud of British arrows fired and spears machine-thrown.
A confusion of attack so broad, so deep, so sudden from the black woods that Horst’s sixty thousand Saxons howled in terror, their battle line staggering, their captains forced to push them from behind with spear points.
Arthur and I sank into the body of the Saxon horde like needles into a pustule, lancing and spurting blood, hacking and throwing up into the air cut heads and arms, smashing shields, cutting Saxons from shoulder to girdlestead, breaking Saxon armor, breaking their battle axes and spears, breaking all swords swung against us.
We and our gouging, biting, hoof-stabbing war horses made a whirlwind confusion of feathers and split armor and faces, metal and Saxons all mashed together until the Saxons began to fall back from the two berserkers and from the sword Excalibur that seemed to extend and extend and extend to reach any warrior it chose, cutting out whole squads and centuries of warriors, gutting divisions, slaughtering princes and warrior queens, overturning cannibal stew pots, cutting apart pagan priests as they groveled in the mud to make false signs of the Cross to beg “Mercy! Spare!” in their shabby British.
Now the army of the Britons howled down onto the Saxons, the Round Tablers streaming feathers and the sweat of a furious thrill, their blades and spear points sun-gleaming, each Tabler screaming for the glory to be first to carve out the life of Duke Horst.
