The Merlin Chronicles: Box Set (All Three Novels)

by Daniel Diehl

“Oh, we’re all packed, my Lord. We’ve been ready for days.”

  Arthur shot a sharp glance toward Jason but only shook his head silently. “I will find ten wagons for you and you will be expected to have them packed and ready to move out in the morning.” Scanning the entire assembly he added “We leave at dawn.”

  That evening, as Beverley, Llewellyn’s wife Ganieda and Myfanwy, the queen’s shy secretary, directed the loading of the wagons, Jason was left alone to pack his bedroll and the small amount of clothing he would take with him on the long march. As he dug through the big square trunk in their room his hand touched the cold, black side of the small pistol he had brought with him from the twenty-first century. Staring at it, he picked it up, hefting its weight in his hand. Shoving it into the waistband of his baggy trousers, hidden beneath his tunic, he repeated the words he had uttered when he first decided to bring a modern weapon into the past: “Just in case.” It was past dusk when he made his last inspection of the thirty wagons containing his ballistae, the supply of arrows and a small mountain of bronze chain, and making certain everything was secure and that the carters and baggage boys were all accounted for.

  The warm yellow sun of early summer had just begun creeping across the grasslands of the Wiltshire plains and the allied armies of King Arthur were already lined up, ready to move toward their confrontation with Morgana le Fay and the dragons. Most of the men and horses had taken their place in line the evening before, camping next to the wagons or at the side of the crude, deeply rutted roadway. How long the trip might actually take no one could predict with certainty, but those who had traveled this route in the past knew that the one hundred and fifty miles between Baenin and Camlann lay across largely trackless open spaces and over rugged passes in the foothills of the Welsh mountains.

  The course Arthur, Ambrosius and Merlin had laid out demanded that they head first west-north-west, traversing the top end of the Severn Estuary and, after crossing the river, alter course to a west-south-westerly direction which would put them on a relatively direct line with Camlann. Those experienced in such things projected that on a good day they might travel as much as fifteen miles; crossing the Welsh mountains would slow them to a four or five mile per day crawl…if they were lucky. Listening to them discuss travel plans, Jason pondered how amazing it was that a simple three hour road trip in his world would now take two weeks – and even that depended on the uncertainties of the Welsh weather and how well their luck held out.

  When King Arthur, his noble allies and chief officers emerged from the old Roman villa and mounted their horses, their army was ready and waiting for them. Stretching for more than two and a quarter miles across the open plain, the troops were arranged in a carefully plotted order. At the head of the line, was a unit of thirty-five equites – riding two abreast, they included Arthur, General Ambrosius and the foreign dignitaries. Next was a unit of five hundred foot soldiers, marching three abreast, followed by a single line of fifty wagons. Behind them were another five hundred soldiers and another unit of thirty-five equites. This pattern was repeated twice more; equites, foot, wagons, foot, equites; dividing the column into an evenly distributed formation of four units of equites – including one at the front and one at the rear of the line – six units of five hundred foot soldiers each, and three clusters of wagons. At the middle of the central cluster of wagons were the ten wagons allotted to the women. The thirty wagons holding ballistae would be divided so that ten ballistae would be included in each of the three contingents of wagons. This arrangement should, according to the consensus of everyone involved in the planning, provide the greatest possible degree of protection for everyone involved in the journey. Should the army be attacked at any point, no one would be too far from the defensive capabilities of foot soldiers, the attacking power of the equites or, in case the dragons swooped down from the sky, from the ballistae.

  As the great army began its slow move westward, it marked the days as much by the monotony of plodding along, hour upon weary hour, as by how many evenings they made camp. The further from Baenin they travelled the fewer occupied towns, villages and hill forts they passed. By the end of the first week, as they approached the eastern-most boundary of Arthur’s kingdom and rounded the tip of the Severn estuary, the clutches of refugees streaming past them began increasing in number and frequency. In the distance they could see and smell the burned-out farmsteads and villages where Morgana’s bullies and their monstrous allies had laid waste to the land. While none of this surprised Arthur, Merlin or Jason, the most unsettling aspect of the destruction was not in what they saw, but what they failed to see. No matter how many small scouting parties they sent out, and despite the refugee’s reports of attacks taking place within the previous day or two, they could discover no sign of marauding thugs or circling dragons.

  * * * *

  “Please, mother, let me take have just two units of your army. Let me attack them.”

  “Not yet. My army isn’t up to strength. You need to learn patience. Can’t you see the size of that army?”

  “I don’t care how many of them there are.”

  “That’s your problem. I love you, but you must learn to think your actions through.”

  Morgana and Mordred stared intently into the black depths of her scrying bowl where a column of miniature figures crept slowly across their line of vision, moving from right to left at a snail’s pace. Morgana’s hand made a scooping motion above the bowl, pulling the invisible lens in for a closer view. Brushing her fingers from left to right, as though flipping the pages of a book, the scene scrolled along the line of marching men, wagons and horses until it came to the clutch of noblemen at the head of the column.

  “There’s Arthur.” Mordred’s index finger shot out, pointing to the small figure on horseback, a purple cloak flung over his right shoulder and the jewel encrusted scabbard of Excalibur slung at his left hip.”

  “Yes. But it’s not what we see that interests me. It’s what I don’t see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where is the wizard?”

  “Who cares about him?”

  “I care, damn it. Use your mind. Merlin is every bit as dangerous as the entire rest of Arthur’s army and he should be right there, next to my brother; he’s always next to my brother. But he’s not there.”

  “Maybe he’s just somewhere else.”

  Morgana manipulated her fingers, changing her line of vision. When the view had shifted to the opposite side of the lead unit, she stopped. “Well, well, well. What do you make of that?”

  Mordred followed her finger. “What? It’s an empty horse. Maybe it’s a spare.”

  “Look closer. That’s no horse, it’s a mule.”

  “So?”

  “So only priests ride mules and Merlin is a priest. Where the hell is he?”

  “Maybe he went to take a piss. How should I know?”

  “No. If he had left the line he would have ridden his mount.”

  “I don’t know, mother. What difference does it make?”

  “I think he’s there.”

  “Where?”

  “On his mule. I think he’s there and I think that for some reason I can’t see him.”

  “You mean he made himself invisible to your scrying?”

  “Yes. I think that’s why I haven’t been able to find the motherless old bastard since he stole my scrolls.”

  “Well, what I want to know is what those things are.” Mordred pointed back along the line of soldiers to the first cluster of wagons where a group of strange looking constructions jutted up from the center-most wagons.

  Morgana leaned forward, moving the focus of the scrying bowl to the right, pulling closer on the ballistae. “How odd. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like that.”

  “What do you think they are?”

  “I think, my son, that whatever they are, they are dangerous and we must keep them in mind for the day the battle comes.”

  “Attack
them now, mother. Kill them all.”

  Morgana patted her son on the cheek. “Patience. You have to learn patience. They have miles to travel and every mile gives me one more chance to wear them down to the point where they are incapable of putting up a fight once they’re within reach. But before then, I want to give them a uniquely Welsh welcome – something, shall we say, properly atmospheric.”

  “I’d rather kill them now.

  “I know, my love. Just be patient. Once they’ve stumbled to my doorstep, tired and weary, you can kill every one of them and bathe in their blood if it pleases you.”

  * * * *

  After the army forded the River Severn and crossed the border into the Welsh territories, the entire feel of the expedition changed perceptibly. Growing numbers of refugees – both men and women – volunteered to join the army, anxious to take revenge on the brutish men and flying monsters that had robbed them of their homes, livestock and, in many instances, family members. In stark counterpoint to the morale boost provided by the new recruits were steadily deteriorating weather conditions which significantly slowed travel.

  The Welsh mountains, even in the relatively low-lying areas of the foot hills, have always been a challenge for travelers. The army’s course, as plotted by Merlin with the help of an obliging Peregrine falcon who constantly surveyed the landscape on the wizard’s behalf, carried them south of the bleak range of mountains which Beverley and Jason knew as the Brecon Beacons. They had planned their route carefully but there was no way to avoid three separate ranges of foot hills.

  As near as Jason could figure, they were somewhere near the location which would, one day, become the town of Pontypool when the notorious Welsh fog set in. Rolling off the hillsides and descending out of an angry black sky with staggering speed, in less than two hours the weather changed from clear and sunny to an impenetrable murk so thick it was like fighting your way through a series of wet, gray blankets. Wave after wave of fog rolled down the hillsides and the balmy summer temperature dropped to a numbing cold and visibility was reduced to less than one hundred feet. Nearly blind and panicked by the roiling fog, the horses lost their way, stumbling off of the narrow track into the loose gravel, slipping, sliding, bucking and jerking, fighting the carters’ every effort to keep them confined to the safety of the rough path. As the water soaked through everyone’s clothes, the cold, wet soldiers began to grumble.

  Jason was trying to guide his skittish horse from one group of ballistae carts to another, checking on their progress, encouraging them as best he could and helping to control the horses, when Merlin and his jet black mule appeared out of the fog.

  “How are you holding up, my boy?”

  Jason wiped the water from his face and grimaced. “You’re from this country, aren’t you?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued. “Why? Why in the name of common sense would any sane person choose to live here?”

  Merlin threw back his head and laughed. “Do you remember what I told you and Beverley when we first drove through here to visit Vivian?”

  Pulling up next to one of his ballista wagons, tugging on the horse’s wet harness to make sure it had not stretched, he shook his head, making the water fly from his sodden hair. “Probably not.”

  “I told you that when you can see the Welsh mountains it means it’s going to rain, and when you can’t see them it means it’s already raining.”

  “Right. Now I remember. I didn’t think it was funny then, either.”

  Merlin laughed again, pulled his water-logged cloak closer around his shoulders and rode ahead, disappearing into the churning fog in a matter of seconds.

  Deciding that the harness and traces remained tight despite the damp, Jason pulled his horse away from the cart and fell in behind Merlin, making his way toward the next cart. Wiping his face again, he contemplated his situation. He had never been in the military and never wanted to be, but he did have some idea of what warfare was supposed to be like and speed was at the heart of that concept. In his world it was fighter planes, helicopters and missiles, and in primitive warfare it was supposed to be charging horses competing to engage the enemy before they could gain an advantage. This, however, seemed like an army made up of snails and turtles, slogging along endlessly with no goal in sight, moving from one damp spot to another. Two days later the damp turned to wet.

  In the normal course of events a good rain will wash fog out of the air, but the rain that began falling in the Welsh foothills was anything but normal. Day after day it rained; hard, steady and relentless, day and night, straight down, without ever easing up, and no matter how hard or long it rained the fog refused to dissolve. An hour after the downpour began everything was soaked. By the end of the first day the roadway had turned into a quagmire, sucking at the soldiers shoes, dragging against the wagons’ wheels and denying the horses traction. Exhausted, hungry, cold and nearly blind Arthur’s army stumbled forward; placing each mud-caked foot in front of the other became a hard-fought battle.

  By the second day the crude roadway ceased to exist. Carts slid from side to side and the horses were up to their fetlocks’ in mud. In an attempt to keep the army moving, the equites were ordered to harness their mounts to the wagons to ease the strain on the carthorses. Foot soldiers stood behind the carts, placing their shoulders against the tailgates and pushing; slipping, sliding, stumbling, falling into the muck but each time doggedly pulling themselves to their feet and returning to their task.

  If possible, the nights were worse than the days. With nowhere dry to make camp, the best anyone could hope for was finding shelter under a bush that might deflect at least a portion of the rain. The carters and baggage boys sought shelter under their wagons, and while this kept the rain off of their heads they, like everyone else, had no choice but to lie down in the mud to sleep. Even the proud equites were reduced to huddling under their horses’ bellies, risking being stepped on in their quest to find even a few minutes respite from the downpour. Not surprisingly, no one got any sleep.

  Worst of all, much of the food was ruined. The pelting rain soaked into cloth bags and wooden chests containing loaves of bread, turning them into inedible slop. It was impossible to light a fire so nothing could be cooked and even if there had been fires, the game had all gone to ground so there was nothing to hunt.

  Shortly after midafternoon on the third day of ceaseless rain a section of hillside that had been loosened by the torrential downpour collapsed into a nameless valley thirty feet below the roadway. The landslide gave no sign it was coming. There was no warning and no chance for anyone to move out of its way. One minute the row of carts was being pushed and pulled through the sucking mud by clutches of slime-covered men and teams of exhausted horses and the next minute five heavily laden carts, ten screaming horses and more than fifty men were sliding out of line, grasping, grabbing, frantic to find purchase in the sea of mud as it carried them over the hillside and out of sight in less than a minute. Like watching a movie in slow motion, those immediately behind the carts could only stare in wonder as their companions gently swayed to the left, slid silently across the track way and disappeared before they even had a chance to scream.

  “You there, tie those ropes to those trees. Hurry, man, hurry.” The captain stood at the edge of the cave-in, shouting orders. He had already sent two equites up the line with orders to halt the column; the soldiers behind the disaster had drawn to an immediate stop. “You, you and you; go down there and see if anybody needs help. Take the end of an extra rope with you to tie around the wounded so we can drag them up.”

  As the column halted its ponderous trek, more and more men made their way to the broken edge of the road, staring into the yawning chasm, anxious to help. Ropes were lashed around men’s waists and they were lowered through the muck to examine the wreckage for survivors and salvageable items from the wagons.

  “Gently, gently. Here, I’ve got him.”

  The captain laid the wounded baggage boy against a tree. While Merlin knelt
to examine his leg and offer reassuring words, they were both splattered with mud thrown by a panicked horse being pulled over the edge of the hillside in a makeshift rope halter. Wiping the slop from his face, Merlin smiled at the terrified teenager. “Just try to relax. It’s going to be all right.”

  “Is it broken, Praefator?”

  “No. You didn’t break it, it’s just a sprain. I’ll bind it tight and in a few days it will be as good as new. I just want you to keep your weight off of it, so ride in one of the wagons for four or five days.”

  Beverley and three women made their way toward the tree where Merlin squatted, laying an unconscious man next to the boy.

  “Do you need me to help with the boy?”

  “No. He’s fine, Beverley. What do you have there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t see any obvious wounds but he isn’t responding.”

  Merlin moved next to the man, shielding the gray face with his body. Rummaging through his leather shoulder bag, the wizard extracted a small square of highly polished bronze and held it under the man’s nose. After a minute he shook his head and stood up.

  “I’ll get some men to help me move him out of the way. I don’t want to frighten the boy.”

  “Is he dead?”

  Merlin only nodded, sighed, took Beverley by the arm and drew her to one side.

  “Have you seen Jason? I need to talk to him.”

  “No. I don’t know where he is. How can you find anybody in all this rain and fog? Why?”

  “This is not just rain and fog.”

  Beverley pulled a sodden strand of hair from her mouth and flung it aside. “Really? You could have fooled me.”

  “What I mean is; this isn’t natural. I feel certain Morgana’s behind this.”

  “Can’t you do some sort of counter spell and make it stop?”

  “First, I have to figure out what type of spell she used. Then I can counter it.”

  Beverley patted Merlin on the shoulder, her hand making a dull splashing sound on the saturated cloth. Just as she was about to speak, Jason rode up. Pulling his horse to a stop he slid breathlessly to the ground, sinking ankle deep in the mud.