For his part, Arthur had to keep his attention on his bastard as Mordred probed for an opening in his guard. He was definitely better than he’d been when they’d dueled in June, faster, stronger, and certainly more battle hardened. Enough so, in fact, to keep Arthur on his toes despite the advantages he enjoyed as a Magus.
Arthur had the ugly suspicion that if he’d still been human, Mordred would almost certainly have killed him.
He wasn’t human now, of course, but remembering Gwen’s dream, he found himself wondering if even that would be enough to save him against odds like these.
• • •
Gwen had finally created a stable gate. But as she stared through it at the scene beyond, her heart sank.
“Saints and devils,” Lady Lynet moaned, echoing her thoughts. “Look how many of them there are! They’ll kill us before we even find Arthur!”
“So we kill them instead,” Iblis said grimly. “Enough fireballs and lightning bolts, and . . .”
Gwen’s stomach twisted at the thought of the agonized screams of burning men. Arthur was right. I could never have used a fireball on Mordred. Aloud, she said, “We can’t kill those men. Half of them are peasants.”
“So?” Iblis demanded. “Forgive me, my queen, but given the circumstances, I don’t see what difference that makes. Not when all our lives hang by a thread.”
Gwen shot her a cool glance. “All lives on that field are valuable to their loved ones. We must think of a way to accomplish our goals without excessive loss of life, if we can. Besides, if we kill too many peasants, there won’t be enough manpower to bring in the full harvest in the fall. Thousands will starve before spring.”
“Well, we must do something,” Morgana said, her eyes grim. “Otherwise they’ll drag us from the saddle long before we reach Arthur and his knights.”
Gwen’s nails bit into her palms. Desperately, she stared into the gate, wracking her brain for a solution. She had to get to Arthur. Her head was so empty of ideas, she could swear it echoed.
She wanted to throw up.
How many of Arthur’s loyalists had been overwhelmed by the sheer mass of Mordred’s forces—and how could Gwen keep even more men from joining them? Frantically, she tried to come up with a plan, an idea, something.
Perhaps Iblis is right. Perhaps we have no choice except to ride through the gate and start shooting fireballs into the crowd . . . I can take Excal- ibur to Arthur in the light of screaming men burning like torches. He’ll love that.
In that instant, the idea burst into her mind as if God himself had whispered it in her ear. Fireballs . . .
A broad grin spread across Gwen’s face.
• • •
Come, my knights, my warriors!” Mordred bellowed. His green eyes met Arthur’s, cold with vicious purpose. “Help me slay this monster who calls himself High King of Britain!”
They hit him in a wave of flesh and bone—fifty men, easily—half of whom Arthur recognized as Mordred’s hangers-on, the pack the prince had once caroused with.
Sorry, you bastard, I have no intention of dying today. Bellowing, the king met them in a blur of sword and shield.
But it was going to be a close thing. Weapons probed and slashed at him, seeking to break through his guard. His Magus speed saved him as Arthur knocked aside spears, axes, and swords, using his shield and his blade simultaneously in furious sweeps. Sweat ran down his armored ribs, itching under the ringing chain mail, stinging his eyes and gluing his hair to his skull under the heavy metal weight of his helm.
If he were human, he’d be dead.
Mordred hung back, the coward, watching him fight for his life with calculating eyes and a snarling mouth. Arthur shot him a look of lethal promise that made his eyes flicker.
As he fought, the king was aware of Lancelot maneuvering until they were fighting back-to-back. Lance, his relentlessly loyal cuckolder, would defend Arthur to his last breath.
A trio of warriors lunged at him, three men who had obviously fought together before, judging by their precisely coordinated attacks. One man came in high, the second low, the third swinging left-handed from the opposite direction. Arthur swept his shield up and to the side, catching the first two blades and forcing them aside as he blocked the third with his sword.
Mordred, watching, spotted his opening and struck, snake quick, swinging his weapon at the king’s head. Arthur brought his shield up and around with Magus speed, simultaneously twisting to drive his blade at Mordred’s throat. Somehow the bastard raised his shield in time to block the blow. Arthur’s sword struck it like a hammer.
And the king’s sword shattered.
Chunks of steel cartwheeled away, glittering in the moonlight—and taking Arthur’s last hope of survival along for the ride.
• • •
Gwen’s horse was on fire.
Blue flame licked along the white mare’s neck like a mane, raced across her barrel and flanks, then burned down the beast’s legs. Yet the horse didn’t seem to feel the flames as she leaped through Gwen’s gate.
The other ladies thundered after the queen on mounts blazing with the same heatless magical flame that left the animals untouched.
Morgana, bringing up the rear, heard the rebels cry out in superstitious terror at the sight of them. “Demons! God save us, they’ve summoned demons!” someone shouted, and others picked up the idea, repeating it until it became a chorus that menaced with its very terror. “Demons! They’re demons, run!”
Men began to push and shove, trying to escape the women on their burning horses, trampling each other in their haste to flee the battlefield.
Just as Gwen had intended.
But listening to those screams, Morgana felt a chill. Yes, the queen had been right to focus on how to save Arthur while sparing the most life on the field. But looking beyond that, Morgana imagined what the world would think of Arthur if he did emerge victorious—if they believed he’d done so with the help of demons.
But before Morgana could come up with a solution to that problem, she heard Gwen’s anguished scream.
Looking past the queen’s shoulder, she saw something glitter over the hill ahead, flying through the air as a mob of soldiers shoved and fought beneath it.
For just a moment the crowd parted, and she saw Arthur Pendragon in the center of it, a shattered blade in his hand. There was nothing left but a jagged metal stub.
Then the mob surged, dragging him down under a wave of screaming men.
“It’s my dream,” Gwen shouted in a voice raw with anguish. “And we’re too far away!”
• • •
Gwen’s dream was coming true, just as she’d been warning him it would for months.
I’ve been a fool, Arthur thought as the mass of soldiers smashed into him, their weight bearing him down into the mud with a thick, liquid splat. He bucked and fought, but men knelt on his arms and chest, pinning his thighs, his shins, and his feet, their victorious howls blowing the smell of beer and rotten teeth into his face. One son of a bitch actually had the gall to grab Arthur’s helmed head, despite his snapping fangs.
“Give me room!” Mordred barked. The one who’d grabbed the king’s head released him and backed hastily away. He must know Mordred would go right through him to kill his father.
Arthur looked up into his son’s nasty grin as the bastard raised his sword, preparing to behead him. “Goodbye, old man! I’m finally going to get what I deserve!”
Then Lancelot fell out of the sky.
One moment Arthur was straining to throw off the mass of men pinning him as the bastard’s blade flashed downward.
The next, du Lac crashed down on someone’s back, smashing the enemy soldier flat and running him through. Mordred’s blade hit Lance’s shield with a thunderous clang, and the two began to fight, savage as badgers.
Arthur kicked men off him as he sought to rise and guard his champion’s back, but more rebels crashed down on him, joining those who held him down. Strong as he was
, he couldn’t find the leverage to free himself of their suffocating weight.
So there was no one to watch Lance’s broad back as he’d watched Arthur’s. As the champion went after Mordred, the rebels hit him from behind, driving a dozen cowardly blades into his back, his ribs, his arms and shoulders, some deflected by his mail, most not.
A hauberk was not designed to withstand so many assaults. Lance’s knees buckled. The knight gasped a curse as he went down, collapsing across the pile pinning Arthur before the rebels shoved his pierced, bleeding body away, kicking and cursing it.
With a roar of grief and fury, Arthur shifted, as he damned well should have thought to do to start with. Hauberk and armor vanished in a burst of magic, leaving him with four furry legs and a muzzle full of sharp teeth. Going for the nearest throat, he sank those wolf fangs deep, twisting his head to break the man’s neck. Screaming, the rebels surged backward, trying desperately to get away from the devil king in their midst.
Then he was on to the next coward, and the one after that, and the one after that, ripping out throats and leaving dying men gagging and convulsing as he tore through the massed traitors. Some stabbed at him, screaming, but most turned and fled in howling confusion. They streamed down the hill, shouting about demons and a king become wolf.
But the one he really wanted dead was Mordred. Mordred, who’d just cost him his finest knight and dearest friend. Unconscious and bleeding, there was no way for Lancelot to shift and heal his injuries, and no time for a healer to reach him.
Mordred, surprisingly, didn’t take the opportunity to run for his life. Arthur might have raised a lying traitor, but at least he wasn’t a coward. The bastard’s eyes were wide in the Y-slit of his visor, but they narrowed as Arthur gathered himself to spring.
“I always said you were a beast.” He snatched up someone’s forgotten spear out of an obvious desire to kill the king from as great a distance as possible. “I didn’t realize you consorted with devils.”
As he snarled at his son, a too-familiar voice shouted, “Arthur!”
Gwen!
Horrified, Arthur jerked toward the direction of her voice—to freeze, staring in gaping astonishment. Even Mordred gasped.
His queen was mounted on a horse of fire.
Flames leaped and licked around her, a cool, unearthly blue brighter than the moonlight, illuminating the desperation on her face as she rode. Flames danced along the great sword she held in one hand as her horse charged across the battlefield at a full gallop. Men dove out of her way, clearing a path for her with panicked howls.
Arthur had never seen such a blade. It was so long and broad he was surprised his wife could heft it. Then he remembered that hers was no longer a woman’s strength—as she, Lance, Merlin, and half the court had been trying to tell him. Now he could see it, just as he finally realized her strength was more than physical. She was charging through blood and gore and death—all the things he’d feared would haunt her—and all he saw in her eyes was a fiery determination to get to him. It was time for him to pull his head out of his arse and start to see her as a ruler in her own right.
“Arthur!” She hurled the sword at him like a spear. “Excalibur,” she told him in the Truebond. “Her name is Excalibur.”
For a moment, it seemed everyone, foes and friends alike, watched the great blade’s glittering flight through the moonlight. There was no way a woman could throw such a weapon so far. Hell, he doubted any man could do it. And yet the sword flew toward him in a high, flashing arc he knew had to be propelled by Gwen’s magic.
Hands! He needed hands. Arthur shifted to human and flung up his right arm, magically garbed again in his armor. As if guided by God’s own hand, the hilt of the sword slapped into his gloved palm hard enough to sting.
Whereupon the weapon almost knocked him right off his feet. Not from the impact, but the sheer boiling force of the magic that infused the great blade.
Steadying himself, Arthur spun—right into Mordred’s attack. Excalibur struck the bastard’s sword in midarc, cutting it in two like a sheet of parchment. The rebel jerked back just enough, and what should have been a mortal blow instead caught his throat with its razor point instead of the edge. He went down in an arcing spray of blood.
For a moment, Arthur felt a bitter relief as he looked down at the sprawled body, thinking his bastard was dead at last.
That hope died as Mordred grabbed his throat with both hands, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Arthur silently cursed, tensing for another attack. Arthur was bitterly aware of the way the scene echoed his previous defeat of his son all those months ago. This time, though, there would be no mercy for the treacherous little fuck. He’d learned his lesson.
Gwen slid her burning mare to a halt on the hilltop, now almost deserted save for Arthur, Mordred, Lance, and the dead. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but Lance is hurt,” he snapped. “See what you can do for him.” Then he turned to deal with the bastard he’d only wounded.
Again.
Arthur was not surprised to see Mordred had once more shed his helm, normally something no knight with any sense would willingly do. Wounded, but with all the cunning of a viper, Mordred wanted his father to see his lying eyes.
Not this time, boy. Arthur braced his booted feet apart and steeled himself. Ordinarily, he’d offer quarter; killing a wounded man like this was a little too close to murder. But quarter demanded an opponent willing to abide by the rule of honor, and Mordred had demonstrated no such rule bound him.
Not honor, love, or loyalty. There’s nothing in him but the scheming ambition to steal a kingdom he’d done nothing to build.
His son stared up at him, both hands fruitlessly gripping his throat. Blood streamed from between his fingers—but, curse it, not enough to kill him. Arthur was going to have to finish him off. The king raised Excalibur, preparing to drive it downward and spit the traitor like a chicken.
“No, Father!” Mordred pleaded in a cracked, broken voice. “Please, I beg your forgiveness!” Tears tracked streaks in the battle dust caking his face.
A dark-haired boy laughed as his father tickled him into kicking squeals, green eyes crinkled in merriment. The memory stabbed Arthur like a dirk in the ribs, a bitter, grinding pain that made him ache all the way to the soul.
He met his son’s gaze with an emotionless stare. Mordred was not the only one who could act as well as any traveling player. “I can smell your traitor’s deception hanging over you like the reek of shit. Even if I couldn’t, I’m not stupid enough to believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth.” Coldly, Arthur eyed his bastard, ignoring the ache in his chest. “When did my son die? When did you kill my child?”
Mordred’s face twisted in thwarted rage. “You killed him, Father! You killed him with your endless old-man droning about honor and duty!” Surging upward like a striking snake, he grabbed a sword from some dead man’s hand and drove it at his father’s groin in a murderous blur of steel and fury.
Arthur twisted aside and ran him through.
Excalibur sliced through Mordred’s chain mail hauberk in one smooth stroke, pinning him in the mud. He dropped his sword, gasping, eyes wide and surprised as he stared at the great blade in his heart. His gaze went fixed, and he slumped back into the muck.
Dead.
The king jerked Excalibur from Mordred’s chest, flicked off the blood with a practiced snap, and slid it into the empty scabbard at his hip. The blade was inches too long for it; the scabbard had been made for a shorter sword, and the weapon’s width split the leather. He’d have to have the armorer make a new one. Arthur turned away, leaving Mordred dead and staring in the mud. Damned if I’ll grieve.
In midstep, he stopped to stare in shock. His numb agony burst into flaming rage.
Lancelot lay with his dark head in his wife’s lap, drinking from her wrist.
FOURTEEN
Arthur’s hand curled around Excalibur’s hilt, prepared to draw it. Prepared f
or one insane moment to kill them both, even knowing that because of the Truebond, he’d share Gwen’s death. Just then, that was exactly the way he wanted it.
She looked up at him, her lovely face serene in the light of the moon. Showing no fear, though she knew full well what he could do—what he had done just now to his own child.
Why am I surprised? Gwen has never been afraid of me, even when my own knights flinch.
“I don’t fear you because I know you, Arthur Pendragon,” she told him in the Truebond. “Just as you know me.”
And he did. His rage drained away, his hand relaxing its grip on Excalibur’s hilt. Had it not been for Merlin’s spell and his own cowardly abandonment, he knew Gwen would never have betrayed him with Lancelot, just as Lancelot would never have betrayed his king and childhood friend.
Mordred had just demonstrated what it felt like to truly be betrayed by someone you loved. Gwen and Lancelot had never done that.
Blowing out a breath, Arthur frowned, again becoming aware that the cries of battle had become a shrieking chorus of “Demons!” and “Fiends of hell!”
The king scanned the battlefield from his hilltop vantage point, and didn’t much like what he saw. “That’s going to be a problem,” he told Gwen in the Truebond. “The Pope’s going to excommunicate me. Again.”
“But he may mean it this time,” Gwen thought, and he knew it was not something she’d intended to share with him.
He started to reply, but a cold, pure voice interrupted, ringing across the battlefield like cathedral bells. “Hold! Hold and heed me, thou faithless traitors to thy anointed king!”
Startled, Gwen and Arthur glanced around to see the voice’s cry. The fleeing mob halted in their tracks to stare in a terror that quickly turned to wonder.
The angel’s great wings spread wide as her robes whipped in the wind of her glowing horse’s passage. Her halo blazed with a radiance that seared tearing eyes. “Heed me!” she thundered as her shining horse reared, dancing on powerful hind legs. “Heed me, oath-breakers and traitors! You dare make war on Arthur Pendragon, anointed of the Lord, thy God! You imperil your souls!”
Wicked Games Page 20
