by Chris Page
“Meaning you will never forgive or forget what King Arthur did to those men’s faces?”
“Never.” Merlin’s answer was unequivocal. “To continue. For some civilizations, the individual power of the heavens was omnipotent and was the focal point of their worship. The sun, in particular, held, and still holds, many in its thrall as the great day star Helios, the eye of heaven. The flora and fauna of this earth rely upon the power of the sun for life. Many times the power of Helios has been called upon to defeat an enemy. In the coming quest to defeat the invading Penda and his fighting soldiers of the north, we, too, are going to use the great power of the eye of heaven in much the same way as Archimedes did when he helped King Hieron II of Syracuse resist the Roman siege of Syracuse. “
“Was Archimedes another Greek?”
“Yes, an inventor and mathematician who lived about a thousand years ago,” replied Merlin. “A man of great intelligence and cunning. Now, before you wear me out completely with questions, call your two piedpoly guardians here and I will show you how, with their love of bright objects, we are going to do as Archimedes did and strike at Penda’s armies with the venom of a scorpion.”
Twilight directed several calls toward the forest, but no pica came to him. He turned to Merlin. “Something is wrong,” he said quietly.
Bushy eyebrows knitted in concern, the long magus nodded and called for a falcon. Phi appeared instantly over the tree line, swooped down into the meadow, and alighted on the ground beside them.
“You must go to the compound immediately.” Phi’s screech was subdued. “The pica await you there.”
“Hold my hand,” snapped the wizard. “Tightly!”
The great eyes glowed a deep emerald, and suddenly they stood outside the compound gates. Massed ranks of pica perched all around the compound as before, but this time there was a difference. Silently they honored the sudden presence of their liege-lord with the raised claw salute. In normal circumstances the pica is a lively, inquisitive bird always bobbing and looking, moving and turning, bright brown eyes everywhere.
Today they were all very still.
Then Twilight and Merlin saw why.
Sitting low in the grass with her beak on the ground in front of the small bush in which they had so patiently showed Twilight how to build a nest was Leela. She was completely still, her bright, intelligent eyes half closed. Alongside her the bush that had held the lovingly constructed nest lay around the ground in hundreds of smashed twigs and leaves. Only the thin, bark-stripped central stem of the bush remained in place. Swinging gently on the forest breezes from the top of the stripped stem was a distinct pair of pica wings with bloody red stumps where they had joined the body.
With pale blue feathers streaking through the center.
Bell alighted alongside Twilight.
“Leela mourns the death of Horn. She will be here for a while. We will watch over her. I am sorry there were no pica by your side, but our presence was required here with Leela for a few moments. We always grieve together. It strengthens the resolve.”
“The white wolf?” Twilight asked tearfully.
“Yes, with the woman. The falcons saw it from the air. Horn was in the nest. It was over very quickly.”
“I polished two small, bright pieces of quartz as presents for Leela and Horn this morning and put them in the nest,” said the boy with tears streaming down his cheeks. “He must have been looking at them when the beast attacked.”
Phi alighted alongside Merlin and delivered another quiet message directly to the long magus. The wizard turned to Twilight.
“I’m afraid that Horn wasn’t the only victim. Phi has just informed me that Bovey and his companion serpent are lying in a forest glade. The old heretic did not heed my warning and tried his trick on Elelendise. The white wolf tore them both to pieces in an instant. I would guess that she came back today whilst we were out in the meadows to ensure that we were following her instructions. Well, now she knows.”
The boy looked at Merlin. “Will you see that Horn gets a small stone in my section at Avebury?”
“Of course,” said the wizard.
“In his honor I will call my great sarsen after him. It shall be known as Blue Horn.”
Twilight knelt down beside Leela. Consumed by her grief she remained still, her beak touching the ground, and her eyes, all shine removed, were fixed on the two pale blue-streaked wings waving gently on the breezes. Her wings, half folded as if she had used up all her strength landing there, draped forlornly on the twig-littered ground. Suddenly becoming aware of his presence she began to struggle to her feet to offer the liege-lord salutation. Gently placing his hand on her back, the boy eased her down, then softly stroked her glossy head.
His eyes were dry now, the tears replaced by determination.
“Rest a while, Leela, and think on the sixty-three wonderful fledglings you raised with Horn. We will never forget him or the great sacrifice he made here. The fight will go on in his name.”
“Can you use your power to bring him back?” she asked huskily.
Twilight looked quickly at Merlin to be greeted by a barely perceptible negative nod of the head. “That is not possible, Leela, but I can guarantee that his soul will find the eternal peace of the blessed martyrs, and his bones will rest alongside my own great stone, which I will have named after him in the venefical rings of Avebury.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Twilight stood and turned to the unmoving assembly of very somber pica gathered around all the available perches of the compound.
“My pica,” he said evenly. “Now is not the time for speeches, but the death of Horn will be avenged, and the pale blue feather shall be the sign of that vengeance. The long magus has a plan to tell you about, in the style, I believe, of Archimedes the Greek inventor.”
Merlin stepped forward. “A thousand years ago the Romans laid siege to the city of Syracuse in a far-off land. Archimedes, an inventor and mathematician, was in the service of King Hieron II, the ruler of Syracuse. He invented a huge catapult for hurling rocks at the encircling enemy, and this was used to good effect during the long siege. But it is his other invention that intrigues me, one that is ideally suited for your use in our coming battles with the armies of Penda and the wolf-woman. Making full use of your natural skills as knowers of the progressions and habits of the earth, it involves the use of one of the most deadly, long-distance weapons available. Oh, and it’s small, bright, and very shiny, and every one of you will have one to keep …”
When the cowerers came to reside in the Charnel House of Tiresias they came only as tortured souls. Sinews no longer bound their flesh and bones together, and their spirit, rustling, had flittered away like a forgotten dream the moment they entered the raging otherworld.
The awesome shade cast by the lord Tiresias as he strode his charnel domain ensured a total silence. Only one time in the year was set aside for talking - the day of the Autumn Equinox - and only a select few cowering leaders were allowed to talk through the clinging mists at their Festival of the Dead.
It was the only outlet, the one chance they had of venting their incandescent rage in an otherwise silent year.
And, they could only do it to the resident veneficus.
Chapter Eight
It takes the green shoots of several seasons to hide the passing of such a belligerent mass. A marching army of the size led toward Wessex by King Penda devastates the places selected for their evening camp. Like a huge swarm of earth-stuck locusts, they stripped and flattened everything in their remorseless quest for a comfortable night. All the available wood was taken for their evening fires, crops for their food, and grazing for their horses. When they departed in the mornings they left behind a treeless swathe of land scarred by the presence of their huge camp, rancid with their makeshift latrines, leaves and plants crushed and spattered with spittle,
and green valleys echoing to their livid northern banter. The only thing they were not allowed to touch during a march was the local women. That was a privilege reserved for the aftermath of victory. The mores of Saxon Christianity and this crusading king considered rape as a legitimate spoil of war that served as both an incentive and payment in kind for the effort of victory. Pagan women deserved all they got and, indeed, were better for the cleansing seed of his Christian violators.
The recent victories on the battlefield had given Penda’s army a confident swagger. Convinced of their invincibility, a position further enhanced by Elelendise’s assertion that they would not face any opposition of note, they marched on Wessex with the boldness and arrogance of the unbeaten.
At their head, mounted on a splendid white charger, his wolf-woman similarly mounted alongside him with her ever-present pale-eyed protector loping along almost under the hooves of her horse, Penda headed for the certain domination of Wessex and his destiny as ruler of the entire Britannica. Out wide in the gullies and forests of the rolling green sward, fierce packs of wolves whined and howled as they tracked the perimeter of the great army in answer to the call from their liege-lord. Joined by other packs as they moved through the country and nervous in the vicinity of so many humans, all previous fears were set aside when their fair-haired venefica called them to the cause. Cubs were left on the ground to die, fresh meat kills to rot, and carefully marked territories to other predators as they instantly turned in the direction of her call. By the time the twelve thousand soldiers approached the verdant rolling green downlands of Wessex they had been joined by over four hundred very dedicated wolves.
You must leave the hide and flee. There is very little time. A great army descends upon Wessex, an army that will kill all before it without mercy. It is counseled by a very dangerous wolf-woman who knows where you are and will harm you because of me. If my father will not go, then you must. Take my brothers and sisters and flee as fast as you can to the west. Go, my beloved mother … now.
Twilight’s mother, Leah, was perplexed when the message, obviously from Will and as clear as speech, flashed into her mind, but somehow she knew it was genuine. The voice, unheard for these past six years, could only be that of her special and precious eldest son. Sam had told her of his surprise when Will had begun to talk when they met Merlin, and although she had a particular bond with her first-born, they had never communicated like this before. It seemed that the wizard Merlin had already begun to impart his strange influences upon Will. Sitting alone in the darkened corner of their hovel, she attempted to form a reply.
“Is that you, Will? Is that really you?” Leah spoke to the empty air.
Instantly the reply came back into her mind.
Yes, my beloved mother, it is me. Did you understand my message?
“I did, but even before I ask him I know the answer. Sam will not believe me and will not allow us to leave the settlement. Oh, Will, my precious, what is to become of us?”
Do not worry. I will consult the long magus; he will think of something. We will be together again soon.
Leah had been right. Sam Timms did not believe her, and she had no way of convincing him that she wasn’t going mad with the suggestion that Wessex was about to be overrun by an invading army advised by a wolf-woman. She could not tell Sam that Will had spoken directly to her mind; he would beat her for double madness and have her condemned for witchery.
So they stayed.
And she prayed.
“Creativity and timing are the most important things in battle. Do things differently but with precision. It confuses the enemy.” Merlin looked down at Twilight from his great height and smiled conspiratorially. “And we certainly have at our disposal the greatest possible aid to creativity, do we not?”
“We do, but so does she,” said Twilight gloomily. “Her sorcery cancels out our sorcery, and then what are we left with? Two flocks of birds with some bright, shiny objects against a well-trained army of thousands helped by hundreds of fierce wolves.”
“Ahhh, the pessimism of untested youth. Armies are cumbersome, unwieldy masses constrained by their very numbers. You are also forgetting a couple of very important facts. First of all Elelendise is herself relatively untested in warfare, and secondly …”
“Wolves don’t have wings,” interrupted the boy.
“No, I wasn’t about to say that,” said Merlin.
“What secondly then?”
The deep emerald eyes glowed.
“Secondly, my doubting little skirmisher, is me. I am the legendary Merlin, an alpha spellbinder of the very finest creative and timing talents,” he said. Then with an airy wave of his long fingers he disappeared.
“Magus?” said the boy, looking around wildly. “Where are you?”
“I am here,” the voice of the long magus whispered in Twilight’s ear.
“And here,” it sang out from the treetops.
“And here, and here, and here,” it zipped around the compound with bewildering speed. “and here.”
Suddenly Merlin stood before the boy again.
Twilight frowned at the wizard. He was not impressed.
“You never moved. I could see the wavy lines of your aura in front of me all the time. Throwing your voice around the place is hardly sorcery.”
“Well done for recognizing my aura signature and the ruse, but remember this. Sorcery is only what you can get away with by using your wits and your speed of thought. How you arrive at your objective is irrelevant to the beholder. Anything out of the ordinary is sorcery to them. If you can’t get away with anything by using your wits, then call upon your enchantments to change the material structure of the situation.”
“Can you teach me to become invisible,” asked the boy, hardly daring to breathe at the very thought of it. Invisibility had been one of his great dreams ever since he’d been old enough to hold a sensible thought in his head.
“Of course. It’s elementary. What you might call boy sorcery.”
“When?” cried the boy excitedly. “When will I be able to just disappear from view?”
“Oh, let me see now.” The old astounder grinned. “You see the setting sun, that huge orange ball beginning to form over the tops of those beech trees over there?”
“Yes, yes, I see it.”
The long magus chuckled at his eagerness. “By the time it disappears from view, you will be able to do the same.”
Shortly after Twilight became, in his own mind, a true veneficus, Merlin taught him the rudimentary enchantment of unsight, the ability to simply render himself invisible. After a few successful attempts Twilight’s manner suddenly changed as he remembered his mother.
“In my eagerness and excitement I forgot to mention that I am faced by a big dilemma right now,” he said quietly.
“Oh?”
“My family, especially my mother. They are right in the path of the advancing army of Penda and its wolverine killers. They will be swept away by the tide of their violence with the rest of their settlement, and for the life of me I can’t think what to do.”
“Illustrates the point I was making earlier perfectly,” said the long magus smugly. He held his long fingers up to silence Twilight. “And before you start berating me for being an arrogant old homo solitarius, a recluse, who is only interested in proving a point, let me explain. You don’t know what to do because you have not met this type of situation before. You are untested in the machinations of its outcomes. It is the same with Elelendise in the matter of warfare. She has counseled on a couple of battles only, likely one-sided affairs at that. I, on the other hand, do know what to do because I have been tested many times in these matters and, in my own defense, not found wanting.”
“Does all that mean that you will do something to save my mother and family?” Twilight asked eagerly.
“I will do what I can,” said Merlin qu
ietly. “Now, let’s address this accursed invasion.”
“Where do we start?”
“Simple. On the borders of the realm. With the creative use of our sorcery, precision timing, and the willing endeavors of our birds, we will endeavor to stop them from entering Wessex.”
Later, the Merlin falcon called Rho banked swiftly over the rolling crest of the most northerly hills of Wessex and alighted gently on the shoulder of the long magus. A series of quick screeches and he was gone.
“The beginning of the column is two hours away,” said Merlin, squinting at the late morning sun. “And no advance guard. The wolves remain on the flanks but will not head the column. This is exactly the formation we wanted. Are the pica in position?”
“Prepared and ready,” said Twilight.
“Good. Now, with whom do you suggest we start?” He beamed at the boy.
“With the wolf Lupa, for what he did to Bell,” said Twilight with feeling.
“Ahhh yes, of course. I thought you would say that. Now let me see if I can get this right. The fierce white wolf is to lose his head, isn’t he?”
“Yes, if you can arrange it?”
“I do believe we can.” Merlin smiled. “But first we must separate the Dog Star Sirius from the side of Orion. In other words get Lupa away from the side of Elelendise.”
