by Ben Bova
Angrily, Aten snapped, “You are not supposed to think, creature! Your purpose is to do what I instruct you to do. Nothing more. And nothing less.”
“But Arthur needs—”
“I will decide what Arthur needs, not you!” Aten snarled. “I want you to help him win a few battles, not take him on a foolish excursion through such dangerous territory.”
I bowed my head, my eyes burning at the radiance streaming from him.
“Arthur’s only purpose is to resist the Angles and Saxons well enough to force them to unite against the Britons. Then they will drive the Celtic oafs into the western sea and take the island for themselves.”
“But what will happen to Arthur?”
“He will be killed.”
“No!”
Aten’s voice hardened. “All men die, Orion. Only my own creatures, such as yourself, are revived to serve me again.”
“But Arthur…”
“He could make a nuisance of himself,” Aten said. “He could become too powerful. For the time being, I allow him to live. But that time will end soon enough.”
“And then?”
“Then the Angles and Saxons and other barbarian tribes will create a mighty empire, Orion. An empire that spans the globe and begins to reach out into space.”
“But can’t Arthur be permitted—”
“Stop pleading for him, Orion! Obey my commands. That is your destiny. Arthur’s destiny is death and obscurity.”
I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to tell him that I would not obey his commands, that I would help Arthur and save him.
But suddenly I was sitting on the ground at our forest camp again, soaked with sweat, breathing heavily. The first milky light of the coming dawn was just starting to filter through the tall trees. Arthur slept across the ashes of our dead campfire from me, as blissfully as a man without a care in the universe.
Should I turn back to Amesbury fort? Abandon this quest for a sword for young Arthur?
His eyes snapped open, bright and clear as the finest amber. He was awake instantly.
“How far are we from my sword, Orion?” he asked as he sat up, all youthful eagerness.
“Not far, my lord,” I replied. “We will reach the lake today.”
I couldn’t turn back now. I couldn’t disappoint Arthur. He trusted me, and I would not betray him, not even for Aten and all his haughty demands.
Yet I should have known that Aten would not willingly allow us to reach our goal.
4
The forest was like a maze of giant trees, their boles as massive as the pillars of a mighty cathedral, their thick leafy canopy so high above us that it was like a dark green roof that blotted out the sun. We had to walk our horses most of the morning, picking through the sturdy trees while birds whistled far overhead and tiny furred creatures chattered at us.
The ground sloped gradually downhill. We were nearing the lake, I realized, although how I knew about the lake and its location was beyond me. Something in my mind told me that we would find the sword for Arthur there; but just how and why—I had no idea.
The forest thinned out as we led the horses, but the underbrush became thicker between the trees. I saw a clearing up ahead, strong morning sunlight slanting through it, and smelled smoke. It was rising from a tiny thatched farmhouse.
Too much smoke. The farmhouse was afire.
“Saxons!” Arthur whispered, dropping to one knee as we peered through the underbrush at the scene in the clearing. I crouched down beside him.
A dozen men in long blond braids and steel-studded leather jerkins were laughing and whooping as two of their compatriots dragged a pair of screaming, struggling teenaged girls across the clearing toward them. A trio of bodies lay in their own blood before the burning farmhouse door: husband, wife, and baby.
Arthur stared, barely breathing.
“We’ve got to stop them,” I whispered.
“Two against fourteen?”
“They’ll murder those girls when they’ve finished with them.”
Arthur wet his lips and shook his head. “Too many of them, Orion. It’s useless.”
He was no fool. Young he may be, but Arthur was not rash. He was loath to charge in against hopeless odds.
“Perhaps we can at least divert their attention,” I whispered hastily, “long enough for the girls to get away.”
Without waiting for his reply, I pushed through the screening foliage and stepped out into the clearing, keeping my sword in its scabbard upon my back. Although the Saxons’ attention was centered on the struggling, pleading girls, one of them noticed me approaching and pointed toward me.
“What clan are you?” I called out in the Saxon tongue. It never occurred to me to wonder how I knew their language. Aten built such knowledge into me.
“Who are you?” demanded the biggest of the barbarians. They were armed with axes and short stabbing swords, I saw. A few steel-tipped spears lay on the ground at their feet.
The men who were holding the sobbing, shaking girls threw them to the ground and drew weapons. I smiled and kept walking slowly toward them.
“How did you get so far inland?” I asked, still approaching them at a leisurely gait.
“We got lost in those damnable woods,” one of the Saxons admitted. “Do you know which way leads to the sea?”
I raised my hand and pointed toward the rising sun. “That way, I think.”
Quicker than they could follow I reached behind my head for my sword and cut the nearest man in two before he could blink an eye. As his blood fountained over me, the others roared with rage and ran toward me. I saw their charge in slow motion, languid as a dream, as my senses speeded into overdrive.
Even so, thirteen against one could end only one way. One of them threw his axe at me; I dodged it easily as it spun lazily toward my head.
The first two that came within arm’s reach of me I cut down like a scythe mows wheat. The others skidded to a stop and began to encircle me.
Then I heard the furious bellow of young Arthur as he charged on horseback into the fray. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him, helmeted and crouched in the saddle behind his red dragon shield, sword upraised, glinting in the morning sun.
Arthur had cleverly maneuvered to my right, so that his charge forced the Saxons to turn away from me to face him. I drove into their midst, slashing bone and sinew, shattering the blades they tried to use to protect themselves. Arthur cut a swath through them, then turned his steed and came back at them even while his first victims were sinking to the ground.
The remaining few broke and ran, screaming for their lives. Arthur galloped after them and cut them down before they could reach the trees. All except the one who dashed in the opposite direction. I hefted his discarded axe and threw it. Its sharp edge caught him between the shoulder blades and he went down face-first with a final shriek of death.
And then it was over. All fourteen Saxons lay dead or dying, and the two terrified girls knelt in the midst of the bloody carnage, by the stump of a felled tree, clutching each other in trembling fear.
Arthur sheathed his red-stained sword and lifted off his helmet, tossing his long sandy hair.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said softly to the girls. “No one will harm you.”
They gaped up at him and the elaborate red dragon on his shield.
5
The girls led us to a village by the lake’s edge, where they told everyone how Arthur had saved them from the Saxon raiders. I was taken to be Arthur’s squire, a nonentity compared to the handsome young nobleman.
The whole village knelt at his feet and blessed him, but Arthur did not allow the villagers’ adoration to affect him. When the village elders begged him to stay the night and take his pick of their women, Arthur replied gently:
“I cannot. I am on a quest that must not be delayed.”
I wondered what would become of the two teenaged girls we had rescued. They were orphaned now, with no family to care for them.
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But Arthur had already considered that. As he swung up onto his saddle, he pointed to them and pronounced solemnly, “Those maidens are under the protection of the High King. Send them to Cadbury castle in the spring and I will see that Ambrosius finds noble husbands for them.”
The girls nearly swooned. The villagers raised a chorus of blessings. Yes, I thought, Arthur will make an excellent king—if he lives long enough.
6
As we rode slowly along the lake’s edge that afternoon, Arthur grew somber.
“I’ve never seen Saxons this far inland before,” he told me. “If we don’t stop them soon, they will overrun all of Britain.”
What could I answer? My Creator wanted the Saxons and their barbarian cousins to conquer Britain, to drive out the Celtic Britons and create an empire of their own.
“Well,” I said, finding my tongue at last, “at least there are fourteen of them whose only part of this island is the ground they are buried in.”
He grinned boyishly at me.
I thought that the Saxon raiders were Aten’s attempt to turn me back from this quest for a sword for Arthur. Perhaps they were. My mistake was to believe that they would be Aten’s only attempt to stop us.
We plodded along the lake’s shore until nearly sunset, with Arthur asking every few minutes where his sword was, like an impatient boy.
There was a strange mixture of elements in him. He had been cautious about attacking the Saxon raiders, lacking in self-confidence. But once he saw me fighting alone against them he attacked with a wild frenzy rather than see me cut down. Then he showed the villagers the nobility of a truly great monarch. And now he was as impatient as a lad yearning to open his Christmas presents.
At last we had circled the lake completely. I reined my mount to a halt and stared out across the water, turned blood red by the setting sun.
“Well?” asked Arthur impatiently.
There was nothing I could say except, “Now we must wait, my lord.”
We dismounted and tethered the horses loosely after removing their saddles and packs, so that they could graze for themselves.
“Wait for what?” Arthur asked. His impatience was beginning to show an edge of doubt.
“For the Lady of the Lake,” I replied, without knowing the words until I heard them myself.
We ate a bit of the hard bread we had brought. No fire for cooking, although I could have eaten a rabbit raw, I was so hungry.
Surprisingly, Arthur stretched out on the ground. “I’m sleepy,” he said, through a big yawn.
“Sleep then, my lord. I will stand watch.”
“Just a little nap,” he muttered. “Don’t know … why I’m … so … sleepy…” His voice faded into a gentle snore.
The instant Arthur closed his eyes a soft silver glow began to surround me, as if I were bathed in moonlight. It was cool and glittering like the light of a million jewels twinkling all around me. And then, standing before me, beautiful Anya appeared.
She was in her warrior’s suit of gleaming metallic silver, fitted snugly over her supple body. Her lustrous midnight-dark hair tumbled past her strong shoulders. Her silver-gray eyes regarded me solemnly. I could not move, could hardly speak, she was so exquisite and I yearned for her so.
“Orion,” she said softly, “you play a dangerous game here.”
“All I want is to be with you,” I whispered, afraid to speak louder, afraid of breaking the spell of her appearance before me. Arthur lay soundly on the ground beside me, his eyes closed in sleep or a trance.
“Aten is furious that you are defying his command. He wants you to return Arthur to Amesbury. There is to be a Saxon attack upon Amesbury fort and he must be there to lead the garrison.”
“To be killed, you mean,” I replied.
Anya said nothing.
“Arthur needs a sword that will bring him victory,” I said.
She smiled, a little sadly. “Do you really believe that a sword could make any difference?”
“It will give him the confidence he needs to fight against hopeless odds. And win.”
“Aten does not want him to win,” she said.
“But I do. I want—”
She silenced me with a finger upon my lips. “It’s not that easy, my love. Aten controls this timeline. I can only interfere indirectly. You must do the hard work.”
“What does Aten want?”
“Rome has collapsed,” she answered. “He wants to build a new empire that stretches from the steppes beyond Muscovy to these British Isles.”
“An empire of the barbarians,” I growled.
“An empire that he can control and manipulate,” Anya said.
“But why? To what end?”
She shrugged. “Who knows what plans are in his mind? He looks centuries ahead, millennia.”
“He’s crazy. No one can control all the forces of spacetime.”
“He believes he can.” Then she smiled again. “But he can’t control you, can he?”
I felt an answering smile curve my lips. “He doesn’t control you, either, does he?”
“But I have the power to work against him when I must. I can even get some of the other Creators to help resist his demands. I’m Aten’s equal, not…” She stopped short.
“Not a mere creature,” I finished for her.
“He could kill you horribly,” Anya warned. “Final death, with no revival.”
I remembered the horror of drowning in the tentacled grip of a gigantic sea monster. I recalled being flayed alive by the fireball of an exploding starship.
“Death is nothing new to me. If we can’t be together, what is life except an endless wheel of pain?”
“I’m trying, Orion. I want to be with you, too, my dearest. But there are forces beyond your ken, forces that keep us apart.”
“Forces manipulated by Aten,” I said flatly.
She shook her head. “Forces that not even he can control, my darling.”
I glanced down at the sleeping young Arthur. “And that young warlord plays a role in these forces.”
“He might. I think there could be greatness in him. But Aten wants to remove him.”
“Kill him, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Then I want to protect him.”
Anya said nothing. She merely regarded me with those somber gray eyes, eyes that held the depths of infinity in them.
“Will you help me?” I asked.
“Orion, you have no idea of the damage you do to the spacetime fabric whenever you defy Aten.”
“Will you help me?” I repeated.
She regarded me gravely. “I love you too much to allow Aten to destroy you.”
“Then you must help Arthur, too.”
She sighed. “Your young friend must help himself. Neither you nor I can put courage into his heart.”
“It’s not courage he needs, it’s…”
But she was gone, vanished as if she had never been there at all, leaving me standing on the shore of the lake as the sky darkened and the moon rose, silver and cool and too far away for me to dream of touching.
7
Arthur awoke, sat up, and rubbed his eyes. “I had a dream,” he said, his voice soft and puzzled. “About my sword.”
As he climbed to his feet I looked out across the lake, silvered now by the rising full moon. It was as calm and flat as a mirror of polished steel. In its middle was an island that hadn’t been there earlier. I realized that it was not an island at all, but an artifact, a structure of metal and glass still dripping because it had risen from the lake’s depths only moments earlier.
Arthur followed my gaze. “Look!” he whispered. “A boat approaches!”
“The Lady of the Lake,” I murmured. Anya was going to help us, after all.
Wordlessly we stepped down to the sandy edge of the shore, Arthur’s eyes fixed on the boat that glided noiselessly across the placid waters.
It was Anya, of course, alone in the self-propelled boa
t. But now she was dressed in a flowing slivery robe and garlanded with flowers. In the moonlight she seemed to glow with an inner radiance. Her hair flowed long and smooth as a river of onyx down her back. Her face was calm, serene, utterly beautiful.
In her arms she cradled a sword in a jeweled scabbard. I recognized that scabbard.
The boat nudged its prow onto the sand before us and stopped. Anya rose to her feet and held the sword out in her two hands.
Arthur seemed frozen, transfixed by her appearance. His eyes were so wide I could see the white all around them, his breathing so heavy he was almost gasping.
“Take the sword,” I coached him in a low whisper. “She’s offering it to you.”
Arthur swallowed hard, then summoned up his courage and stepped into the gently lapping wavelets to the side of the boat. His boots sank into the soft sand.
“Wield this sword for right and justice,” Anya intoned, handing it to Arthur’s trembling hands.
“I will, my lady,” he said breathlessly. “Just as you command.”
“Do so, and the others will follow you.”
“I will, my lady,” he repeated.
Without another word Anya sat on the boat’s only bench once more and the vessel backed off the sand, made a stately, silent turn, and glided back to the “island” in the middle of the lake. We watched, Arthur dumbfounded and trembling, as the boat disappeared into an opening in the structure and then the entire mass slowly sank beneath the surface of the water.
It was not until the “island” was completely gone that Arthur blinked and shook himself, like a man coming out of a trance.
Then he pulled the sword out of its jeweled scabbard. I recognized the word Excalibur incised on its fine steel blade. It was the sword I had taken from Grendel’s cave, the night Beowulf and I killed the monster’s mother. Anya had held it all these years, protected it from Aten’s knowledge, held it for the moment when Arthur needed it.
Arthur swished the blade through the night air, his grin bright enough to rival the full moon.
Then we heard the roar of the dragon.
8
It was a dinosaur, of course, a giant raptor fetched by Aten from its own time and translated across millions of years to kill Arthur.
