The Merlin Chronicles: Box Set (All Three Novels)

by Daniel Diehl

  “Move it to the right. No, the other way; my right. Easy, easy now, only about half a hand span.” When the men had pushed and pulled until they repositioned the heavy truss about four inches to the east, he called to them again. “Woah. That’s good. Right there. Now spike it in place.”

  Finally satisfied, he turned toward Merlin and the others, shaking his head, muttering to himself. Eventually he looked up, offered a gap-toothed grin and hobbled toward the newcomers, his left leg moving hesitantly, as though it was deformed or had healed improperly after suffering a bad break.

  “Good morning, Praefator. I heard you had returned to Baenin.” Sticking out his hand to Merlin, he cast an appraising glance toward Jason and Beverley. “Ah, and these must be the great wizards that everyone is talking about; come to help rid us of the flying monsters.” Grinning and nodding his head the man gave a perfunctory bow toward Beverley and offered Jason an enthusiastic Roman handshake. “I’m Davidd, the king’s architect and head builder and if there is anything I can do to help, you just let me know.”

  “Actually, Davidd, I brought Master Jason and Mistress Beverley here specifically to meet you because we need to enlist your services as chief builder.”

  Grinning up at Merlin, the man nodded vigorously. “I can leave these lads to their work for a while; why don’t we go to my private quarters and you can explain exactly what you need me to do.”

  On their way to the door, Jason looked upward, toward the truss work and open sky beyond and asked “Why are all the buildings only one story tall? Wouldn’t it save ground space if you built them two stories high?”

  The seemingly logical question brought a gale of laughter from the little man. “You’re right, and it sounds great, doesn’t it? The only problem is that you can only use the rooms on the second story in the summertime. There’s no way to get heat up there. I can’t build a fire pit on a wooden floor and there would be no way for the smoke from the main fire pit to escape without a smoke hole directly above it. If you can figure out an answer to that one, I’ll buy you all the ale you can drink for the next year.”

  “Well, you could just move the fire against the wall and build a chim…ouch!”

  Jerking his leg off the ground in sudden pain, Jason looked at a scowling Beverley who had just planted a firm kick on his ankle. When she raised one eyebrow and cocked her head to one side, Jason realized what he had almost done. “Right. No modern technology.” He mumbled. “Don’t change the past. Gotta remember that.” Muttering to himself, he strode toward the door.

  Wandering through the streets of Baenin, Davidd explained the reasons why he had designed the layout of the village the way he had. During times of peace there would be ample space for the homes, shops, kitchen gardens and animals of those who made their living as merchants, craftsmen and the king’s closest councilors. Even so, there remained enough unused land inside the stockade walls that during enemy attacks the farmers and shepherds could move their herds inside the protective walls. Davidd conceded that it would be close quarters, but it would keep everyone safe from the Saxons or Picts or the Irish raiders. When Beverley asked how they planned to protect the people from dragon attacks, the architect shook his head and muttered something about “only God being able to save them.” But he brightened up immediately, adding “But as I understand it, that’s why the praefator brought you here. So maybe between us we can keep everyone safe from them, too”.

  After a quick walk halfway across the little compound, they came to one of the larger of the half-finished cottages and Davidd stood aside, offering a low, sweeping bow to usher them inside.

  In the center of the room was a long table on which four, low-sided wooden boxes were arranged in a neat row. Each box was about two feet square and two inches deep and filled with fine sand. Into the carefully smoothed surface of the sand architectural drawings had been scratched with some kind of a sharp tool. All around the room, rank upon rank of shelves held a hundred or more of the shallow trays. Excusing himself, smiling and nodding, the king’s architect carefully moved each of the sand sketches to its proper shelf, replacing them with two fresh, unused boxes, their faces as smooth as a tide-washed beach. After testing the surface of the sand to make sure it was moist enough to hold a design, he reached into his belt pouch, extracted a wooden stylus the size and shape of a pencil and handed it to Jason.

  “Now, you show me what you want me to build.”

  Staring for a second at the sharpened stick, Jason asked “So, what kind of measuring system do you use for building things?”

  “Well, that depends. For large measurements we use a rod.” Pointing toward a corner of the room where a smooth stick about four-and-a-half feet in length leaned against the wall, he explained. “Each different place has its own rod, that’s mine. And then you can have a half rod or a quarter rod and you can have a cubit; that’s the distance from the point of your elbow to the end of your middle finger. And for little things we use a span; that’s the distance from the end of your outstretched thumb to the tip of your little finger.” Grinning, he ended by asking “So what do you use?”

  “Oh, boy. There has to be an easier way to do this.” Jason squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, trying to decide on the most effective way forward. “Look, how about if I just draw the thing and give you a general idea of what size some of the main pieces should be and we can sort out the details as we go along. How would that be?”

  “Sure. We do that all the time.” Apparently as an afterthought, he added “And if we need to do any calculating to sort out the exact proportions or something, we can do it the usual way.”

  “I hate to ask, but what’s the ‘usual way’.”

  Taking the stylus gently from Jason’s hand, Davidd bent over the lower left-hand corner of the sand box and scratched into the smooth surface the words Anno Domini followed by CDLXXXV. Straightening up, he offered a huge grin lacking so many teeth his mouth looked like a picket fence, and proudly declared “Numerals”.

  When Jason stared blankly at the man and asked “You mean you can actually do math with Roman numerals?” Beverley had to pretend to cough to conceal her laughter.

  Resigning himself to the fact that the only way this was going to work was for him to leave the details in Davidd’s skilled hands, Jason began scratching a crude deign in the moist, sandy surface. As the drawing took shape, the thing depicted in the sand looked very much like a large crossbow mounted on a tripod base. When something failed to work the way he wanted, Jason rubbed his hand over the surface of the sand, made it disappear, and started over. As he worked, he gave Davidd a list of materials he would need, recalling as much as he could from the ballista he and the Buddhist monks had built in Mongolia seven years earlier. He had to keep reminding himself – and by extension Beverley and Merlin - that this was not some new invention and that the ballista had been a common weapon in the Roman army.

  As the drawing slowly took shape, Jason patiently answered all of Davidd’s questions, explaining how twisted coils of rope provided sufficient torsion to the throwing arms to launch the oversized arrow hundreds of yards through the air and still have enough power to penetrate a board as thick as a man’s wrist. When Davidd needed clarification as to the size of the component pieces, Jason illustrated with his hands – indicating the length of the bed on which the arrow rested by stretching his long arms to their fullest extent. For the size of the individual left and right throwing arms he said they should be as long and as big around as his forearm, making certain that the builder understood that they would be under tremendous pressure and would have to be made of ash or yew if they were to have the strength and flexibility necessary to do their job without breaking.

  Merlin remained unusually silent throughout most of the long meeting, allowing Jason time to expound on his plans and thoughts at his own pace, and in his own way. It was not until Jason made it clear that he was wrapping up his presentation that the sorcerer interjected him
self into the conversation.

  “Excuse me, Davidd, but I need to speak with Jason in private for a moment; technical wizard things which we’re not allowed to share with even the most trusted outsiders. I hope you understand.” When the architect nodded, waved his assent and stepped around the table to study the latest tablet full of drawings, Merlin pulled Jason aside, motioning Beverley to follow. “In Mongolia you…what did you call it ‘shorted out the dragon’s system’…by attaching one end of a roll of copper wire to the arrow and burying the other end in a pile of ice. How do you plan on doing that here?”

  “I don’t suppose they’ve figured out how to make wire yet, have they?”

  Pointing to the elaborate filigree on his torque, Merlin responded. “Actually we can make small amounts of wire, but nothing like you’re talking about. Besides, the copper we have is very brittle, I have no doubt that hundreds of feet of wire would break when it unwound. Is there some way to join short pieces of wire together so they won’t break apart when the wire plays out with the arrow? ”

  A long moment of awkward, frustrated silence was broken when Beverley almost shouted “I’ve got it. Why couldn’t we use chain?”

  “That’s a lot of chain, Babe. It would get awfully heavy. I think it would pull the arrow right out of the air.”

  “Not if we used thin copper wire. Think of a piece of heavy wire six or eight inches long with a loop on each end. Why couldn’t we link a lot of them together to make a wire chain? It wouldn’t be much heavier than wire and it would be completely flexible.” Her head swiveled back and forth from Jason to Merlin, awaiting their judgment and input.

  Finally, Jason looked at Merlin. “I guess there are really only two questions. Can you get enough copper, and do you have enough craftsmen with the skill to make enough chain for all those arrows?”

  After a pause calculated to build tension to the appropriate level, Merlin offered a lopsided grin and a nod. “We don’t have enough copper in Britain, but we have tin and lead and we can trade both of them to the Cornish and the Welsh tribes for their copper, so I know we can get the material.”

  “And the craftsmen?”

  “If Beverley and our jewelry maker can make me a sample…well…let’s just say you can leave the rest to me. I’ll get you all the chain you need. But there’s still the other thing to deal with.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where do you plan on getting a pile of ice to bury the opposite end of the wire in? That is how you drew the power out of the dragon’s system, isn’t it?”

  Jason smiled. “We don’t have to have ice. Water of any kind will short-out electrical current and if we don’t have any water we can drive an iron stake into the ground and fasten the chain to that. Anything that will drain away the electrical energy that keeps them alive.”

  Apparently satisfied, Merlin nodded. “How nice.”

  That evening, dinner among the royal family was an excited, noisy affair, animated by constant chatter and much hopeful head nodding and laughter. The king and queen had been joined by Merlin, Beverley and Jason along with Davidd the architect, Griffudd the military officer and his wife and Gwenhwyfar’s friend Ganieda and her husband Llewellyn, who seemed completely dedicated to delighting the ladies anytime he was not busy commanding Arthur’s equites. Predictably, the table talk revolved almost exclusively around the strange machine Jason had designed for Davidd and no one seemed completely convinced that such a thing could actually exist until Davidd went to his workshop and retrieved one of the drawings for everyone to’ Ooo’ and ‘Ahh’ over.

  When the conversation inevitably came around to Jason and Merlin’s encounter with the dragon in the far-off land they called Mongolia, Merlin insisted that credit for slaying the beast lay with Jason and Jason alone. He also declared that Jason was far too modest to tell the story properly, and therefore insisted on relaying it himself. For nearly an hour he brought his story vibrantly to life, filling the center of the banquet room with smoky, conjured images of a slavering dragon attacking its intended victims, dive-bombing across the roofline of a wispy likeness of the towering Buddhist monastery in the mountains separating Russia and Mongolia. Facing down the beast were recreations of Jason and Merlin themselves, the wizard casting a spell of protection while Jason manned the crudely built ballista. The vision culminated when Jason’s arrow plunged into the dragon’s belly and the entire scene disappeared in a brilliantly colorful display of pyrotechnics and exploding dragon entrails.

  As much as Merlin’s stellar performance was lauded by everyone - and even King Arthur rose and applauded, insisting that the great wizard had once again outdone himself - the predominant topic of the evening’s conversation centered around practical and logistical matters. Griffudd wanted to know if Jason would instruct some of his men in the operation of the machines; the king was concerned about trade deals with the Cornish and Welsh tribes and Llewellyn repeatedly voiced his anxiety about how the ballistae would be positioned on the battlefield and whether they would affect the movement of his cavalry.

  For more than three hours Jason fielded one question after another, trying to come up with answers he could not possibly know. He tried to be as diplomatic as he could, insisting that he would need to know more about how the army and cavalry maneuvered before he could formulate any real plans, but what he really wanted to do was jump onto the table, stamp his feet and scream I don’t fucking know. I don’t have any goddamned idea how this is going to work. Will you all just PLEASE leave me alone. Instead, he nodded sagely and gave the best answers he could.

  The air on a springtime evening has a magical clarity about it. The scent of pale green grasses and newly opening leaves float on the breeze, inviting people to inhale deeply, refreshing themselves after the stuffy closeness of the long winter. Following the rowdy boisterousness of an animated fifth century dinner, heavy with strong ale and too much meat, Jason and Beverley were glad to grab a few moments to themselves, to walk outside into the gentle night, clear their heads and collect their wits. After less than forty hours in the past they had been thrown into an almost constant whirl of activity and they both felt lost, confused and jet lagged. Now, in their first few quiet moments alone in this strange world, they found themselves so captivated by what they saw that they were unable to speak. Above them, from black horizon to black horizon, the sky spread out endlessly, as soft as sable and as dark as coal dust. But more amazing still were the stars - millions upon millions of them, filling every inch of the sky, forming random patterns that neither of them had ever seen before. It was a long, long time before either of them spoke. Eventually, Beverley broke the silence.

  “No ambient light.” Her voice was as soft as a whisper in church.

  Jason never took his eyes off of the overwhelming panorama spread out above them as he answered. “What’s that, Babe?”

  “I said; we can see so many stars because there isn’t any ambient light. You know, light from towns and streetlights and cars and motorways. We’ve forgotten what darkness really is; what the night is supposed to look like.”

  “’S amazing.” Now, drawn out of his reverie, Jason was quiet for a long moment before he spoke again, and when he did his voice was so soft and dreamy that Beverley was unsure if he was talking to her or to himself. “What about healing arts?”

  “What?”

  The spell of the night now broken, Jason gathered his thoughts and clarified his question. “Yesterday, when you first met Arthur, you said you had skills in the healing arts. What did you mean by that?”

  “Oh, that. Well, I took a couple of first aid classes when I was in Girl Guides and I just thought it was probably a lot more than they know about basic things like cleaning wounds and using clean bandages and preventing infections and things like that.”

  “Remember, no modern technology. We agreed.”

  “No, no. I don’t think showing them how to boil water to sterilize a knife or wash out a wound before you bandage it is going to c
hange history…though it might save somebody’s life.”

  “Ok. Just sayin’…” Halting in mid-sentence, Jason squinted into the darkness and raised his hand, pointing toward the west. “What’s that?”

  “Where?”

  “Over there. I think it’s a guy on horseback and it looks like he’s coming this way. Fast.”

  As they watched, a rider and the short, pony-like horse he was riding took shape as they thundered through the darkness, headed across the meadow, straight toward Arthur’s palace. As he approached, the two guards stationed at the main door of the old villa walked forward to meet him, passing Jason and Beverley on their way to the spot where the rider reined his overheated mount to a halt and jumped to the ground. One of the guards grabbed the horse’s reins while the man spoke breathlessly, too far away for Jason or Beverley to hear what he was saying. In a matter of seconds one of the guards grabbed the still babbling man by the arm and rushed him toward the palace door. As they stormed past Jason and Beverley, the man continued to spill out the details of whatever event had brought him to such a fever pitch. They were too far away, and the man was speaking too fast, for them to understand what he was talking about, but they both distinctly heard the word “Saxons”.

  Chapter Nine

  It had been two days since the exhausted, panicked messenger arrived at the gates of Arthur’s palace, and every intervening minute had been filled with shouted orders, hushed meetings, hurried activity and general confusion. Arthur had immediately sent riders to every corner of his kingdom with orders that everyone pledged to serve in his army and cavalry should come at once to Baenin. Griffudd and several of his most trusted men inspected stockpiles of weapons, ordered the women to prepare food supplies for a week’s march and began drilling the troops from the moment they straggled into camp, constantly adding to the size of the little army as more and more levies arrived.