The Wolf and the Crown (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 3)

by A. A. Attanasio

  "What does it matter who wears the crown?" Syrax asked with a dismissive wave. "Wesc or Arthor, what difference really? It is trade that is important. Commerce is the lifeblood of the nation. If we do not share this island with the Foederatus, they will take it whole from us. Let Wesc be king. For Arthor there will be other titles, any of them he wishes—and all profitable."

  Levels of Dream

  Eufrasia approached Bors Bona in the dark of his tent, Merlin's charm outheld in her hand. He sat on the edge of his cot, arms dangling between his legs, integral with the darkness but for the whites of his staring eyes. "Mother—is this truly you?"

  The tent interior flared brightly as the flap behind Eufrasia lifted and the matron of the army's tailors burst in, a broad blade flashing with the camp's firelight. She seized Eufrasia by a hank of hair and twisted her to the ground, blade thrust to her throat. Before the knife could bite, Bors seized the matron's beefy arm and yanked her aside.

  "What are you doing?" he shouted. Immediately, guards rushed in with lanterns and fell back against the canvas walls, each amazed to see the ghost of their lost love sprawled before them.

  The matron broke the gold chain from about Eufrasia's throat and thrust the mauve phial into the lantern light. "A heathen charm on a pagan wench! I saw her ensorcell her way to your tent, lord. I saw the guards agog. It is witchcraft! I saw it!"

  Bors glowered in astonishment at the beautiful pagan woman lying before him and felt as though still asleep and drifting between levels of dream. "Who sent you?"

  "The king's wizard—Merlin." She stood and passed an angry look to the matron, who glared back at her. "I am Eufrasia, daughter of Aidan, who is chief under Lot of the North Isles."

  "Of what evil did you hope to possess our lord?" one of the guards growled, angry to see the ghost he loved gone.

  "No evil at all!" She raised her chin indignantly. "That charm will win your lord's affection for our king—Arthor."

  Taking a lantern from one of the guards, Bors dismissed the onlookers. "Destroy that charm, and leave us undisturbed." He hung the lantern beside his sword on a hook of the tent pole and motioned wearily for the young woman to sit on the cushioned bench opposite his cot. "Merlin is not so wise as I had once thought."

  "Wise enough to deliver me unseen past all your army," Eufrasia said defiantly from where she remained standing.

  "Oh, his magic is beyond my ken, I'll grant you that." Bors wrapped himself in a brown mantle and sat on his cot, running his blunt fingers through his gray, brush-cut hair, still amazed and wondering if he were truly awake. "To think he believes he needs magic to win my affection for the king! That diminishes my opinion of him."

  Eufrasia sat on the edge of the cushioned bench. "You have affection for the king?"

  "As I did for his father, Uther Pendragon."

  "Then why—why are you serving the enemy?"

  "Syrax lured me to Londinium with the threat of his alliance to the Foederatus. I intended to dissuade him of that. He used magic—Merlin himself—to entrance me. I don't know how he did that, how he won the wizard to the Foederatus cause. But he did. Or he seemed to. And when I came to my senses, my army was in the enemy's control. If I had openly defied the magister militum then, I would be dead now and my realm in the Parisi lands destroyed by the Picts. The north tribes restrained their destruction of my lands only because of my alliance with their masters. Now you tell me that the wizard who baffled me in Londinium strives to win my loyalty to a king I already admire!"

  "Why did you not give your pledge to Arthor at Camelot?"

  Bors shrugged. "He was untried. A boy. I will tell you this—he won my loyalty by his victories against the invaders across the land." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Now, if I can be certain I am not dreaming, we will decide what we must do to save our king."

  The Making of Warriors

  After Cei arrived at Camelot with the Graal and the Round Table, regal ceremonies and Christian rituals greeted him. He retreated to his quarters to sleep for a day and a night while the festivities accelerated to an almost carnival delirium.

  At their peak, when the elephant parades and Bacchanalian flower dances spilled from the bailey out of the fortress-city and onto the fields, Arthor called a halt to them. He painfully remembered his drunken carousing of the previous summer and understood far better now the grim responsibilities of his regal station.

  With his brother and seneschal, Cei, seated to his left, and his aide Bedevere to his right, King Arthor called to order his first meeting of the Warriors of the Round Table. Discussions, arguments, and strategies ranged for a full day and well into the night about the best course of action to take against the magister militum's army arrayed to the south and the east and Bors Bona poised in the north. News of Ygrane's capture had reached Arthor days before, and that fact, as well as the widespread destruction that Syrax had wreaked upon the royal provinces, hampered any hope of a peaceful settlement.

  Arthor did not sleep that night. At dawn, he left the castle on foot and waved away his entourage so that he could stroll alone on the flower-strewn bluffs above the Amnis. Below him, the thick dark current ran, impersonal as timeflow itself, talking up from its depths in ceaseless and myriad murmurs the voices of history.

  Laughter distracted the king from his brooding, and he spied Gawain and Gareth frolicking on the river banks, dueling with swords improvised from river canes. He observed the making of warriors intently, noting their already accomplished stances, feints, and parries.

  They eyed him a moment later and silently fell to their knees. Compelled by the recollection of his own youth when he and Cei had similarly mock-dueled, he strode down the bank to the boys and hailed them, "Nephews, rise and stay your weapons."

  He removed his chaplet and placed it upon the head of the youngest. "It's heavier than it feels, Gareth." To the eldest, he handed Excalibur drawn from its sheath. "And this, Gawain, is sharper than you know, so mind where you swing it."

  "Will you take us with you to war, Uncle?" Gawain asked, lopping off the tufted head of a river weed.

  "There may not be a war. Not if I can negotiate peace."

  Gawain and Gareth shared a perplexed look. "Peace?" the eldest asked, expression startled. "With the men who abducted grandmother? The men who burned the fruit trees and vineyards?"

  "These men are under my protection too." Arthor sat down on a rock shelf and tossed into the river a pebble that skipped thrice before plunking out of sight. "How can I kill those I protect?"

  Gareth placed the chaplet back on Arthor's head. "Because you are king—and the king serves God first."

  "God—?" The word pierced him. For a long minute, he sat stunned in shameful silence. "Mary, mother of Christ, I've been so concerned about doing right—I'd forgotten about God."

  []

  Mother Mary, today a child has led me, even as Isaiah portends. How can I hope to serve Britain if I do not first serve God? And has not our Father put Excalibur into my hand that I may protect our island from all her enemies? What before was uncertain is now clear. My disquietude over slaying the people I must protect is allayed, for now God shall strike through me those who oppose His righteous kingdom. My arm shall be strong, my hand steady. I only pray that my hesitancy has not jeopardized the faith of those who follow me—for fear knows no friend.

  To the Edge of the World

  Dagonet had ridden so far north by the time he loosed his fifth arrow that the world had changed. He rode through high sweeping country of fir and dark spruce, where cranes flew above lines of lakes and heather shimmered like blue fur on the slopes. The wind in the high forests sang down from heaven with resinous scents, carrying silver storms across long horizons, and at night blustered green auroras through the black of space.

  Rain fell slantwise coming from over the curve of the Earth, sometimes from clouds he never saw. A faerie dust of snow sprinkled the higher rock ledges and the purple gorse, and cold gray mist swirled in r
ocky gorges. Under a brown sunset, he fired his white arrow, and it flew in a red arc as if to the edge of the world.

  Lord Monkey waited in his dray cart under a rack of twilight clouds troweled orange while Dagonet climbed down the shale shelves, across small, pebbly creeks and stone pools. The arrow had struck a large, black wolf between the shoulder blades, and it fled from him across the sunset land toward a serrate horizon. There, the wind sucked fire from the sky.

  He ran doubled over, with a back pain so severe he felt permanently warped by his past efforts. He had drafted Merlin a letter, inquiring if the talking fish spoke the truth: that he was becoming again a dwarf through the gradual loss of the Fire Lord's magic. When he found this night's treasure, he would send the letter along with it.

  For the moment, he cared not how Merlin replied. He was the king's man and noble station was not won lightly. He scrambled over gray stones and heather slopes with all his might.

  The wolf loped on, the arrow wagging from its back. It vanished among a clutter of tall, frost-veined rocks. As in a maze, he wandered between the monoliths until he found the white arrow. It had fallen from the wolf's back and lay upon the flint-littered ground. When he looked up, he nearly sat down with surprise. The arrow pointed to a statue graven from a rock tall as he.

  Through the long twilight, Dagonet returned to Lord Monkey and guided the dray cart over gorse slopes and rocky terrain to the rough-hewn statue. Its primitive shape seemed no treasure to him—a stocky woman with a swollen belly and pendulous breasts. Her simple face bore only the vaguest semblance of features. Her quiet eyes and dim smile weathered to shadows in the rock by millennia of erosive wind and rain gave off stillness in the red air.

  The effort to dig the statue loose from the rocky grasp of the earth and then lower it onto the dray cart cost him all his strength. The cart groaned as if about to split asunder, and Lord Monkey shrieked and set the horse going before Dagonet's bruised hands could extract the parchment letter he had drafted for Merlin.

  Night in the north fled quickly. Lightning from a clear sky lit the sky pools where he had crawled to sleep upon the moss ledges. Raindrops whispered upon the clear water briefly and woke him to a dawn bright as a huge orchid in the south.

  The dray cart had returned, and Lord Monkey sat placidly on the riding board eating from a sack of cherries. No note accompanied the cart. No note of gratitude or direction from the wizard. Two white arrows remained, and the way north opened onto taiga, a treeless distance wide as the world.

  Immortal Silver

  Ygrane rode between Severus Syrax and Count Platorius as their army advanced across the Belgae lands and into Cymru. The destruction of hamlets, the burning of forests, the slaughter of herds and their drovers appalled her. "How can you murder your own people, lay waste to your own lands and yet hope to rule this island?" she queried angrily when they brought her to their command tent the evening before the march toward Camelot.

  "Abbess, your priorities are skewed," Severus Syrax assured her. "We are not destroying for the sake of rule. I care not who rules this dismal island. We are destroying to break the rule of your tyrant son so that we may take what has always been the true prize of war—wealth."

  Ygrane stood with her arms open in appeal before the elegant magister militum and the dark-eyed count, who both sat on ornate, lacquered chairs. "Do you truly believe silver will sate your souls? Immortal silver should be your prize. Seek the welfare of the people and wealth beyond measure will be yours. The love of the people is the favor of God. Count Platorius—you are a Christian nobleman of venerable lineage, surely you do not condone this brutal campaign that lays waste our lands?"

  The count tugged at his earlobe. "Nowhere in my venerable lineage has the favor of God been negotiable for goods. You yourself, my dear abbess, agreed that you were summoned to our presence by the Maker of Snakes. God who fashions birds assigns the snake to stalk their nests. This is the argument of our general, and I certainly believe he speaks the truth."

  Severus Syrax clapped his hands, and into the lamp-lit tent strode a scar-faced man with thick shoulders and black hair pulled back and braided to a long rat's tail. "I the Lord create good, and I create evil. Isaiah forty-five, seven."

  "Our field commander, King Gorthyn Belgae," the magister militum introduced. "King Wesc accepted him into the Foederatus after your son exiled him from Britain."

  "You destroy your own realm?" Ygrane asked, outraged.

  Gorthyn snarled at her indignant tone and struck out with his fist. His blow smote her in the face and sent her flying backward in a flurry of robes and a spray of blood.

  Count Platorius leaped to his feet, while Severus Syrax snickered from behind his beringed fingers. "My God, Gorthyn—you may have killed her! No ransom in a corpse!"

  "And no ransom from a corpse," Gorthyn growled. "We march on Camelot tomorrow. We have blocked all roads to the south. Bors Bona holds the north and east. There will be no escape for the tyrant or his people. And there will be no prisoners."

  Ether Worlds

  In her trance wanderings outside her physical body, Morgeu the Fey peered upon the hilly landscape of Cymru. From the ether worlds, she saw the arterial tributaries of the Amnis and her sister rivers shining like spilled quicksilver. The forests shimmered in silks of thermal colors, a geography of feverish hues. Shadows breathed. The moon in the day sky gleamed like a cool lake. And the sun in its savage feathers danced.

  Since arriving in Camelot, the enchantress had searched the ether worlds for the magic she needed to take back from Merlin the soul he had stolen from her womb. She had come full term corporeally and the birth of her child was already late by several weeks. Yet she well knew that, if she gave birth without first securing the child's soul, she would deliver a stillborn.

  Enraged and bitterly frustrated by Merlin's power over her, she soared drunkenly through the ether worlds. The blue sky appeared like blocks of ice, transparent blue auras lumped together randomly and rayed with tracks of trapped air—pathways that led to the afterlife. She did not want to go there.

  Nor did she wish to rise above the sky into the eternal night where stars flared like silver hollyhocks. She wanted vengeance in this world.

  All that mattered to Merlin was his precious hope of a united kingdom, and she searched for a spiteful way to thwart that. She perceived the armies below, among billowy vapors of heat swirling through the forests. She recognized their banners: the blue pennants of Londinium that her father had died defending—they ranged among the hills south of the handsome spires of Camelot. To the east, she identified the numerous boar's-head banners of the mighty warlord of the Parisi, Bors Bona.

  Trained by her father in military strategy, Morgeu noted from her ethereal aerie that Bors Bona's army had abandoned its offensive positions against Camelot and had shifted south, moving threateningly against the magister militum's forces. In her pique, she determined that Arthor would not have the help of this warlord's superior army. Merlin and his puppet king would taste defeat, even if that meant risking the life of her own husband.

  Into clouds that nourished like opulent blossoms above Bors Bona's army, she fixed her attention. Her voice cried out to the Furor, "Storm-maker, hear me! Let me be your eyes. See the enemy of your ambitions as I see them. Bors Bona moves to attack the forces gathered against the demon Lailoken. Strike now! Gather your might, Father of the North Tribes, and release your power!"

  Acres of cloud the color of pearls swelled, gathering heat from the sun-warmed earth. Energy convulsed. Lightning flared with blinding intensity, and Morgeu rocked with the force of it.

  "Wake up! You are dreaming!"

  Morgeu snapped alert, once again inside her physical body, lying among scarlet satins of the bed in her red room atop a tower of Camelot. Lot sat beside her, straps of battle leather across his naked shoulders, a shield braced against his back.

  "I must go to war to fight for your brother," he said and stroked the sweaty hair from her glea
ming brow. "No more fitful dreams until I return." He placed a hand on her swollen belly. "Fear not. Even Merlin's hard heart will soften after our victory."

  The Heart of Fire

  "I will lead the attack against Syrax," King Arthor determined. He sat at the Round Table flanked by Cei and Bedevere. Facing across the varnished expanse of the table and the Graal at the center were his warriors, Marcus, Urien, Kyner, and Lot. "After the archery assault, I will bring our cavalry to bear against the magister militum. If God favors me, I will take his head."

  "Sire, I must object," Kyner spoke first even as the others moved to voice their concerns. "Your place is at the command station outside Cold Kitchen."

  "If this were a battle against invaders, I would agree," the king replied wearily. "We will be fighting Britons. They must see that they are opposing their king—and it is the king's wrath that they have provoked by their brutal destruction of our farmlands."

  "Your banner will announce your presence," Marcus spoke. "All who see the Red Eagle will know they are fighting you."

  "The Red Eagle is the king's fire," Urien added.

  "I am the heart of that fire." Arthor spoke adamantly. "It is my heart that suffers for the many hundreds of people under my protection who were betrayed by Syrax and his cohorts. Those traitors must die. And if Britons must die against the king, then they will die under Excalibur. I will have it no other way."

  "You put yourself at terrible risk, sire," said Cei, both of his fists on the table. "And that will weaken us. Don't you see? To protect you will distract us from our battle assignments."

  "No one is to protect me." The king moved his stare slowly around the table. "Understand that. No one is to protect me. In this battle, I am one of you, a warrior among warriors."