by Ben Bova
She laughed softly. “It’s time for pleasure, Orion. You’ve toiled so hard; now it’s time for your reward.”
It was her pleased amusement that broke the spell. She was so sure of herself, so certain that she could control me, any man, with her sexual allure.
I grasped her throat with both hands. “All mortals die, Aphrodite. Once you assume mortal form you take on the risks of mortal life.”
Her eyes flashed wide. “You can’t! You mustn’t!”
“The witch Morganna is going to die,” I told her. “Or disappear from this time and place forever.”
And that’s just what she did: disappeared. One instant her body was pressed against mine and my hands were around her throat. The next I was alone on the windswept battlement of the castle.
Not entirely alone. I sensed a blazing anger, a raging hatred burning across the eons and parsecs of spacetime. Aphrodite was furious that I could resist her, enraged that I could reject her enticements. In her eyes I had been merely a creature that she could toy with; now she was my implacable enemy.
So be it, I thought. She’s gone from this placetime. Perhaps she’ll return, but this night Arthur will be able to sleep without being troubled by her dreams of guilt and shame.
4
Instead of returning to Arthur’s camp, I willed myself to the camp of Modred’s army, up at the top of the ridgeline facing Arthur’s forces. Modred himself was sleeping in a fine tent, guarded by four men-at-arms, with dogs chained to posts pounded into the ground. The instant I appeared there the hounds snapped out of their slumber, ears perked, growling and alert.
In the light of the guttering campfire in front of the tent’s entrance, the guards stiffened with surprise. As they leveled their spears at my belly, the tallest of them demanded, “Who are you?”
“I am Orion, a messenger from the High King.”
They glanced uneasily at one another.
“Messenger,” snapped one of them. “More likely a spy from the High King.”
“The High King?” asked their tall leader. “You mean Arthur?”
“Yes. I wish to speak to your commander, Sir Modred.”
They dithered, apparently fearful of waking Modred in the middle of the night. I stretched my senses, searching the camp for some sign of the Creators. Nothing. They were not intervening in the coming battle, I thought. They were content to allow these mortals to slaughter each other without their aid or direction—except for Morganna’s insidious undermining of Arthur’s spirit.
But now that I’d chased Aphrodite away, I wondered if the Creators would return here to exert their will.
One of the guards eyed me suspiciously and asked, “How did you get this far, into the middle of our camp? Didn’t the pickets stop you?”
“They didn’t see me,” I answered truthfully.
“You made yourself invisible?” gasped the smallest of the quartet, his hand going to an amulet he wore around his neck.
“Not really,” I told him.
Their leader, the tall one, said curtly, “Sir Modred is sleeping. We dare not awaken him.”
Then I will, I decided. Recalling how the Neandertals could communicate with animals and control them, I reached with my mind into the four shaggy hounds chained at the feet of the guards. Within moments all four of them were howling, baying at the moon, even though it was nothing more than a faint glimmer behind the low, threatening clouds.
The two younger guards tried to hush the dogs, to no avail. Their yowls got stronger, louder. One of the youths started to kick the nearest hound, but I jabbed his shoulder hard enough to push him off balance.
He wheeled at me, pulling his sword. The other three leveled their spears at me once more.
“Stop that infernal noise!” came an angry voice from inside the tent.
Modred stepped out, one hand rubbing at his eyes. “I can’t sleep with that damnable racket in my ears!”
I let the dogs stop. In the sudden silence, Modred saw me—a stranger—and the guards confronting me with drawn weapons.
He was a handsome young man, almost beautiful. A slim, nearly ascetic face that showed his lineage from Aphrodite quite clearly, with nothing of Arthur’s hearty, more boyish good looks. Ebon dark hair falling to his shoulders and a trim dark beard outlining his jaw. He was shorter than Arthur and far more slender, almost delicate.
“Who’s this?” Modred demanded, eying me warily.
“My lord, he says he’s a messenger from the High King.”
“Take his sword, you idiots.”
They unclipped my sword from the belt around my waist. I held my arms outstretched and made no move to stop them. Odysseos’ dagger remained hidden beneath my tunic, strapped to my thigh.
Modred stepped up to me, eyes narrowed. He was several finger widths shorter than I.
“Messenger, eh?” he said, in a derisive tone. “You look more like a fighting man to me.”
“I am Sir Orion,” I replied, “and I serve the High King.”
“My loving father,” said Modred, dripping acid. Turning to the guards, he said, “Stand alert here. I’ll listen to what this … messenger has to say.” With that, he beckoned me to follow him inside his tent.
The tent’s interior was handsomely furnished, with carpets on the ground and a fine table surrounded by four sturdy chairs. A full bed stood in one corner, plush pillows piled high atop it, rich blankets roiled and hanging halfway to the carpeting. Modred liked his luxuries, I realized.
He lit the oil lamp on the table, then turned back to me.
“So what says my loving father? Is he prepared to die?” Before I could reply Modred went on, “Is he enough of a Christian to realize that he’ll roast in hell for all eternity?”
I smiled tightly at him. “I expect that Arthur believes he will see heaven.”
“With the stain of fornication on his soul? And incest? He raped my mother! His own sister!”
My jaw dropped open. His sister?
“You didn’t know that, did you, sir knight? He didn’t tell you that one little point, did he?”
“My lord, I was his squire when he first met Morganna,” I said. “She bewitched him, enticed him beyond any man’s power to resist. And he certainly did not know that she was his sister.”
“So he tells you,” Modred grumbled.
“Be that as it may,” I said, “there is no reason for you to fight the High King. You can settle whatever the differences may be between you—”
“Only death can settle our differences!”
“My lord, surely—”
“He ignored me! He pretended that I didn’t exist! Even when I went to his fine castle at Cadbury and asked him—begged him!—to be invested among his knights of the Round Table, he acted as if he wished I’d disappear, as if he wished that I’d never been born!”
Modred’s anger was like a physical force. All the years of his life Morganna had filled his ears with this hatred, and now it was implacable.
Suddenly he laughed: a harsh, bitter laugh. “You think we can settle the differences between us, messenger? There’s only one point of difference. I want his throne. It’s rightfully mine, after he dies, and I’m going to see to it that he dies! He’ll never give it to me willingly, even though it’s my right by birth. So I’ll take it from him. With these two hands.”
I could see something close to madness in Modred’s blazing dark eyes. An obsession that had been planted in his mind from birth. I had banished Morganna/Aphrodite too late, far too late. Her poison filled Modred. Only death could extinguish it.
“Now go back to your High King and tell him that his son will slay him on the morrow and take his crown for my own. And his wife, in the bargain! Tell him that!”
For an instant I thought that I could kill him with my bare hands. Snap his neck before he knew what was happening. But something stopped me. Perhaps it was Aten’s will overpowering me, perhaps it was my own disgust at the thought of committing still another murder.
Whatever, I slowly turned and left Modred’s tent, to make my way back to Arthur’s camp and the coming battle.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Battle of Camlann
1
The morning dawned thick with fog, worse than the day before. Arthur’s knights roused themselves and slowly, reluctantly, donned their chain mail and climbed onto their horses. Once again we stood in battle array at the foot of the slope, barely able to see through the chill, dank fog the army of Modred waiting for us at the crest of the ridge. The air was still, and the tendrils of fog seemed to clutch at us like cold, evil fingers.
Sir Percival was mounted at Arthur’s other side, staring gloomily at Modred’s host atop the ridge. “Look, sire,” he said, pointing. “They’re in sunlight up there.”
“Mayhap the sun will broil them in their armor,” Arthur joked.
Percival was not amused. “They outnumber us by far, sire,” he said, just as he had the previous morning.
Arthur turned to him and smiled wryly. “What of it? If we are to die, there’s enough of us to make our people mourn our loss. But if we win, the fewer we are, the greater our glory.”
Percival looked unconvinced, but he muttered, “I suppose so, sire.”
I looked at Arthur’s smiling face. “Did you sleep well, sire?” I asked.
“Quite well, Sir Orion,” he said happily. “Very well indeed.”
Arthur was himself again. Morganna’s invasion of his dreams had ended.
Shielding his eyes against the rising sun, Arthur wondered, “Will this everlasting fog burn away?”
“Not for hours, sire,” I answered.
“We can’t just sit here for another day, Orion. Half my men will pack up and leave if we don’t fight this morning.”
“But it would be folly to charge uphill against Modred. That’s just what he’s waiting for.”
Arthur shook his head, murmuring, “I wish there was some way to entice him to come down here.”
“Perhaps there is, sire,” I said, remembering a tactic that the Mongols had used when I’d been among their horde under the leadership of the wily Subotai.
I explained to Arthur the Mongol tactic of the feigned withdrawal. Often Subotai, when faced with a force that outnumbered his, would have his mounted warriors pretend to retreat, inviting the enemy to charge after them. The Mongol horsemen bent their line into an arc, like a bow, with the middle retreating faster than their wings. The enemy usually charged into the center of the retreating line, thinking that the Mongols were fleeing.
At a given signal, the Mongols wheeled about to face their pursuers. Before they realized they’d been tricked, the enemy found themselves attacked on both their flanks, while the center of the Mongol line stood firm and faced the enemy’s charge. Hemmed in on both sides, the enemy’s numbers became a liability instead of an asset; they were too crowded to fight effectively.
It was a tactic the Mongols had devised from the great hunts they undertook every autumn in their homeland by the Gobi. Subotai perfected the trick and used it to slaughter armies from the Gobi to the Danube River.
“Pretend to retreat?” Arthur asked, uncertainly.
“Let the center of our line move the fastest, and the wings more slowly,” I said.
“It sounds complicated.”
“Explain it to the leaders of your knights. And have the churls pack up the wagons, or at least move them out of the way.”
He scratched at his beard.
I urged, “Modred will think you’re retreating, running away. He’ll charge down from his hilltop position to chase you. Your knights can surround him and chop his men to pieces.”
His face furrowed with deliberation, Arthur at last nodded and smiled at me. “It’s worth trying,” he said.
The fog did not burn away, even though the morning sun climbed higher in the sky. Arthur called his leaders together and explained what must be done. The workmen were sent scampering to pack up the wagons and start them down the road we had taken to get here.
“Modred can’t see the wagons through this damnable fog,” Arthur complained.
“But he’ll see your knights when they begin to retreat, sire,” I said.
“Yes, he will, won’t he?”
“And he’ll come charging down the slope to catch you in retreat.”
Nodding doubtfully, Arthur muttered, “More men are slain in retreat than when they face the enemy bravely, that’s true.”
It would work, I was certain. We’ll trick Modred into racing down here and face him on this level.
It was nearly high noon before Arthur gave the order to begin the retreat. Despite the sun shining high above, the fog still lingered, chill and dank, like an evil omen. Arthur gave the word at last; as the bugles blared, he turned his steed and, with a glance over his shoulder, began leading his troops away from Modred’s waiting army.
It almost worked.
2
I should have realized that these Celtic knights, who gloried in single combat, were not able to match the well-drilled maneuvers of Subotai’s veteran army of hardened Mongol horsemen. The retreat began well enough, although it was clear that Arthur’s men thought their High King was showing cowardice to run away from the enemy. That was all to the good, as far as I was concerned: perhaps Modred, watching us from up on the ridgeline, would also think Arthur had lost his nerve.
Slowly we plodded through the fog, which seemed as thick as ever. I could not see more than a few dozen knights on either side of me. Turning in my saddle, I looked back at Modred, still sitting in the clear sunshine, unmoving beneath his black boar pennant.
The feigned retreat depends on careful training and strict obedience to the commander’s orders. The Celtic knights had precious little of this kind of training in coordinated maneuvers, and hardly any of the iron discipline that had made the Mongols conquerors of most of the world. Practically born in the saddle, the Mongol warriors were drilled mercilessly in the kinds of maneuvers that confounded the enemies they faced. Subotai’s men swept across the breadth of Asia and crushed the armies of Europe’s Christian kings because they rode as one mailed fist: thousands of hardened warriors fighting as a single entity, controlled by one mind.
This kind of discipline was unknown to the Celts. These knights had little knowledge of tactics beyond the headlong charge into their enemy’s midst. After that, their battles broke down into individual fights, man-on-man, little better than the vainglorious Achaean warriors who spent years on the plain of Ilium because they had no idea of how to surmount Troy’s high walls.
So Arthur’s knights slowly, unwillingly retreated into the fog. Even in the little I could see clearly, instead of moving in a smooth unbroken line they were already clumping together, a few knights riding close to each other, leaving gaps in their line.
“Sire,” I said to Arthur, “the men should keep an even separation from one another. If there are breaks in our line, the enemy can take advantage of them.”
Arthur nodded. “Ride up and down the line, Orion, and tell them what they must do. Tell them their High King commands it.”
“Yes, sire,” I said.
But as I spurred my horse to begin giving Arthur’s orders, the air was rent by the blast of bugles. Looking up, I saw that Modred’s host was at last charging down the slope toward us, lances leveled, pennants flying.
“Ah-ah!” Arthur shouted, relieved, as squires went racing among our knights, handing out helmets and shields, heavy thrusting lances and lighter throwing spears.
Arthur’s face was smiling, buoyant, as he lifted his helmet over his head. The battle was about to begin and he was in his element. Mongol tactics were not for him, even though he understood the value of them. The enemy was charging at him, and he was eager to countercharge straight into their midst, lance in hand, Excalibur at his side.
I pulled on my helmet and spurred my mount. The whole army was aroar, charging now pell-mell into the enemy, all thought of tactic
s and discipline blown away in their sudden relief. This they could understand. Face your enemy and smite him with heavy blows. Battle at its most brutally elemental.
Through the swirling fog we charged, lances in hand, horses racing at full gallop. Once again my senses went into overdrive; I saw Modred’s knights charging at us as if the world had slowed to dreamy languor. Even as I spurred my steed onward I could see the bulging eyes of the horses approaching us, spittle dripping from their bared teeth.
With their helmets hiding their faces and their heavy shields in front of their bodies, the enemy knights looked more like robots than humans. I could not see their faces. I tried to tell myself that they were intent on killing me, and worse, killing Arthur.
Yet the old primitive excitement that I once felt in the heat of battle was no longer in me. I tried to tell myself that these faceless warriors charging toward me were machines, toys, inhuman killing machines. Yet I knew that inside those helmets and suits of chain mail were men, human beings who lived and hoped and feared and did not want to die.
No matter. They were upon us and the two armies clashed into each other with a roar and clang of metal against metal. Lances splintered. Knights were lifted out of their saddles. Men and horses went down. The swirling fog was filled with shouts and curses, screams of agony and blood-chilling war cries.
In an instant the battle lost all semblance of order. We were not two armies fighting against one another but a wild tangle of men slashing and thrusting in individual combats.
Charging alongside Arthur, I smashed into the first knight I could reach, my lance cracking through his shield and knocking him out of his saddle. He crashed to the ground as I drove past him and took on another knight. His lance thrust screeched along my shield and passed me harmlessly while I feinted toward his helmeted head and then dug my lance into his middle, beneath his raised shield. He screamed in agony and fell off his charging horse.
