by Frank Miller
Arthur hurried to corral two crying Faun children who were nimbly avoiding efforts to get them into the rowboat. He scooped up one from behind, enduring a series of jabs from the young Faun’s budding antlers, and plopped him into the arms of a Faun elder. As Arthur fought to keep the boat steady through a series of strong waves, shouts arose above the rush of the surf. Arthur glanced to the hulks, where people were rushing toward the bow, which was pointed out to sea. He heard them scream, “Raiders!”
Arthur’s heart sank into his belly as the shadows of Viking longships appeared like wraiths in the fog. They peeled out of the mists like predatory sharks, flying the white axes of Eydis, encircling the hulks and volleying hooks and arrows onto their decks. Mass panic ensued aboard the already overloaded hulks. Arrow-filled bodies began to leap from the decks into the frigid waters, where it was easier for the Viking archers to finish them off.
Arthur and dozens of Fey Kind floundered into the ocean to receive the survivors, many of whom washed up drowned and riddled with arrows. There was absolute mayhem aboard the Pendragon hulks as panicking sailors held up a weak defense against the dreaded Vikings, who were as at home in sea battle as they were curled up beside a warm hearth.
Arthur was swallowing gouts of seawater, dragging heavy bodies ashore, when a shaft struck the sand beside him. He looked up at the cliffs at another cohort of raiders firing arrows onto the beach. We’re ducks in a barrel, Arthur realized as another two arrows thudded into the sands, dangerously close. Fey Kind scattered blindly, fleeing in all directions, and Arthur watched several cut down, Viking arrows in their backs. His eyes searched desperately for cover. He spied an outcrop, nearer to the raiders’ cliff, but its proximity would actually make them harder targets.
“To the rocks! The rocks!” Arthur screamed, pointing to the jutting sandstone a hundred yards away. He spotted Wroth hurrying Fey Kind toward the shelter, an arrow in his shoulder, as Fauns tried to return fire and a few raiders cartwheeled down the steep cliff, shafts through their necks.
Arthur plucked a Snake child into his arms and attempted to sweep a pair of elderly Storm Crafters along as arrows zipped past their ears. He turned back with dread to see the shoreline blackening with bodies. When he looked out to sea, he saw raiders had already taken one of the hulks, its deck belching smoke, dead Pendragon sailors being thrown overboard. The heads of Fey and men alike bobbed in the four hundred yards between the hulks and the sands. There were still nearly two hundred Fey Kind on the beach, only forty or fifty capable of defense, and Arthur felt dizzy at the thought of the impending slaughter. He raced under the sandstone abutment, where dozens of Fey had already found shelter, thanks to Wroth. Luckily, it was deeper than Arthur had first assumed, reaching fifty feet into a small cave, and would allow protection for most of the Fey, at least until the Vikings landed on the beach.
FIFTY-SEVEN
NIMUE’S BRUTAL HOURS OF WAITING ended abruptly as two Red Paladins barged into her tent supporting Gawain, his arms over their shoulders, and they dumped him, naked but for a loincloth, on the ground. His horrendous wounds glimmered wetly in the torchlight.
“Here’s the bag of shit you ordered,” one of the paladins spat as they exited the tent.
A gust of horror fell out of Nimue as she dropped onto her knees next to Gawain and put his head in her lap. “Gawain?” She felt his neck and chest for a heartbeat, put her ear to his lips. Small breaths rattled in his chest. “No, no, no, no, no,” she repeated over and over as her hands traced over the terrible burns, gouges, and cuts that riddled Gawain’s body. “Not you, no, no, no, Gawain,” she whispered through tears.
His fingers twitched. His good eye tried to open and his lips struggled to form words. Again, she put her ear to his lips.
In barely a whisper he said, “Squirrel.” He took another shallow breath. “They have Squirrel.”
Nimue sobbed at this as Gawain ebbed. His eye rolled back and she held his cheeks. “No, hold on. Hold on.” Vines of silver crept up her cheeks and filled the tent with light as a rage pushed through her entire body and erupted through her mouth. It was a deafening roar that blew out the early evening torches of Camp Pendragon and shuddered through the trees of the surrounding forests.
Morgan swung around from her hiding place in a thick copse of trees above the royal campsite. Nimue’s scream hung on the air like a ghostly echo. Tears welled in her eyes. She knew what this meant and knew her orders: if Nimue were killed or conditions turned for the worse, she was to spirit the Sword of Power back to the Fey Kind. Morgan’s horse became agitated, disturbed by the unnatural scream, and Morgan’s eyes fell on the pommel secured in her saddlebag. If there was a chance she was alive, Nimue would need the sword. Morgan had seen her do incredible things with it. She hadn’t come this far to abandon her now, had she? She had not.
Morgan dug in her heels, the horse shot forward, and she galloped through the trees, hurtling down the winding deer path toward the Pendragon camp.
Squirrel shivered in the darkness. He’d been in the tent for hours, maybe even a day. The cry he’d heard, unnatural as it was, sounded like Nimue. It had somehow blown out the torches in the torture tent, and Red Paladins struggled to relight them. Squirrel’s hands were tied tightly to the arms of a wooden chair that was cold and wet with Gawain’s blood. He could not move his feet either, as his ankles were similarly bound. His heart fluttered like a bird’s as Brother Salt shuffled into the tent.
“We’re working on the torches,” one of the two Red Paladins said, entering with Brother Salt.
“I don’t need them,” Brother Salt chuckled, his silhouette moving closer to Squirrel. He set an old leather bag on the table in front of Squirrel and unrolled it, revealing an array of torture tools.
“Don’t you need the fire to”—one of the Red Paladins hesitated, choosing his words—“do your work?”
“No,” Brother Salt said quietly, selecting a heavy iron screw and a set of thick pincers and holding them in front of his stitched eyes. “I can do other things.”
Squirrel could not breathe. He jolted as Brother Salt touched his leg.
“Shall we play now?” he asked Squirrel.
The boy closed his eyes. He heard a wet gasp and two thumps, which confused him, so he opened his eyes again.
Brother Salt tilted his head, listening. “Brothers?” he asked.
Squirrel could barely see in the darkness, though he could make out someone else in the tent. A moment later a gray hood loomed over Brother Salt, who smiled uneasily. “Have you come to watch, my Crying Brother?”
“No,” the Weeping Monk answered as thin, wet steel punched through Brother Salt’s chest, stopping inches from Squirrel’s nose. Then the blade was retracted quickly and the torturer slumped backward, his sandals flopping into the air. The monk shoved the body aside with his boot, examined Squirrel’s restraints, then freed his hands with two swift chops to the arms of the chair. Two chops later and Squirrel’s legs were free.
The Weeping Monk took him by the collar, almost lifting him into the air. “Can you walk?”
“I—I think so,” Squirrel sputtered.
“Stay close,” the monk advised as he went to the entrance, his gray hem sliding across a dead paladin’s shocked face.
When they emerged from Brother Salt’s tent, it was very dark. Thanks to a half-moon, Squirrel could make out the tent shapes, but that was about it. The Weeping Monk pulled Squirrel by the arm through a winding maze of tents, then paused. They both heard the sounds of chains. Squirrel looked behind him and saw the moonlight fall on the dead man’s face of a Trinity guard. And another. And another. He turned his eyes forward and saw another wall of Trinity, their gruesome flails dangling by their legs. Squirrel counted ten Trinity.
Abbot Wicklow parted two Trinity guards to address the monk. “We have suspected for some time that your true sympathies went against the Church. Why is that, we wonder?”
“He’s just a boy,” the Weeping Monk answere
d.
“Yes, a Fey orphan. Perhaps he reminds you of someone,” Wicklow mused. “Give him to us, Lancelot.”
“Behind that barrel,” the Weeping Monk ordered Squirrel in a calm voice. Squirrel ran and ducked down beside a water barrel as the monk drew his sword. He addressed Wicklow. “I don’t want to fight you.”
The abbot folded his hands behind his back. “The Church has reclaimed its supremacy over this embarrassing episode. The Fey witch will burn as she must. As we speak, her kind is being exterminated on the Beggar’s Coast. And finally, Father Carden’s corrupting weakness will be expunged. Surrender, brother, and I promise a clean death. You know the skill of my Trinity guards. Don’t make this any bloodier than it needs to be.”
The monk’s answer was to stand utterly still, fists wrapped around the grip of his sword, the blade of which he held before his closed eyes.
Abbot Wicklow understood. “So be it.” He nodded to the Trinity, who converged around the monk in a circle. Several flails spun. On their first advance, the Weeping Monk sprang into the air and kicked out, sending two Trinity sprawling through opposite tents. As he landed, he severed another’s arm and lopped the head from a fourth. But a flail captured his blade and yanked it from his hands.
Squirrel watched with terrified awe as the monk took a boot under the chin, snapping his head, and a flail ripped the back of his neck. He was shoved forward and used his momentum to tackle a Trinity guard, rolling over him and locking his arm around his neck. As the monk stood up, he cracked the man’s spine and dropped him like a sack of bricks. He leaped and vaulted over a shearing wave of flails to reclaim his sword, which had fallen into the mud. He somersaulted between two Trinity guards, blade sticking out to one side, cutting their legs, then faltered, his strength seeming to leave him.
As the Weeping Monk knelt on the ground, Squirrel could see dark blood soaking the monk’s hood from where the flail had torn him open.
As the monk tried to rise, he suffered a drubbing. Spiked balls rained down on his arms and back and head as the three remaining trained hand-to-hand fighters cracked his ribs with vicious kicks. Two of them grappled and held him as the third Trinity guard slashed him right down the cheek and chest with his flail. Blood sprayed everywhere and the monk buckled in their arms. They lifted him up again, and the Trinity guard reared back to strike, but the monk managed to wrap his legs around the man’s throat. With masterful body control, his left foot locked behind the man’s neck as his right foot wedged under his jaw and pushed up, snapping the bone. The man flopped down like a pile of laundry. But more flails from the last two guards rained down on him and the Weeping Monk crashed down hard onto the ground.
Squirrel covered his eyes for what came next.
Across the Minotaur Valley, at the Pendragon camp, shouts and calls were rising everywhere. Cries of “Where is the king?” and “Prepare for battle!” filled the air.
Merlin was a lion in a cage, pacing back and forth in his tent prison, as the two footmen guarding him grew more and more alarmed by what they were hearing outside. Finally they flagged down an out-of-breath archer.
One of the footmen, his gut hanging over his belt, asked, “What in the bloody hell is happening!”
The archer gasped, “His Majesty’s ships are attacked! The Church has made alliance with the Vikings!” With that, the archer flew out of the tent.
“God’s blood,” the other footman said, running his hands through his greasy locks. This one couldn’t have been older than fifteen. “They mean to attack us.”
“Stay here. Watch him,” the portly footman growled, throwing the tent flap back and entering the growing chaos.
The greasy footman turned around to set the rules and Merlin was on him, tightly wrapping his arms around the footman’s mouth and neck. As the boy struggled in his arms, Merlin tried to remember who had taught him the hold. He thought it might have been the Bedouin chief Mohammed Saleh abu-Rabia Al Heuwaitat, or Charlemagne’s sword master, whose name he had forgotten. Both were excellent fighting instructors. By the time Merlin had decided it was the sword master who’d taught him the hold, the young footman was asleep in his arms. Merlin laid him down, stole his broadsword, and flew out of the tent.
FIFTY-EIGHT
NIMUE WEPT OVER GAWAIN’S DEAD body. His skin gleamed with frost and the vines of the Sky Folk shone on his neck and cheeks. But he was gone. Nimue had poured all she had into him but to no avail. His wounds were raw and open, his body still scourged with burns. Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard the growing chaos outside, the panicked shouts of Pendragon soldiers. She sat back on her knees, almost drunk with sorrow. But the hot tears gave way to a hot blood that rose up her throat and into her skull, boiling like a pot. She threw out her arms and opened herself to the Hidden, heart, mind, and soul. Her mouth opened wide and a fog poured forth, washing over Gawain, filling the tent and flooding out the door.
The fog also rolled in from the surrounding forests in gargantuan waves, barreling down the Minotaurs hills and swallowing the tents in a thick and oppressive gloom, only heightening the bedlam.
Before they even knew what was happening, Nimue walked past the guards posted outside her tent, enshrouded by the mists of the Hidden. Frightened soldiers brushed past her without a second glance. She heard others crying, “Where is the king?” and “The king has abandoned us!”
However, back in the tent that had sheltered Nimue, Gawain’s resting place, something was happening, something that Nimue did not see. Tiny blades of baby grass were forming like a strange web between Gawain’s body and the ground itself. Within a matter of minutes the baby grasses had lengthened and reached over Gawain’s shoulder and across his chest until they had formed what could only be described as a shroud over his entire body, mummifying him beneath an undulating sheet of grasses.
But outside, the camp erupted with the screams of the murdered as hundreds of Red Paladin horsemen invaded Camp Pendragon, their torches burning away the fog, cutting down the king’s men with the same practiced brutality they had used on the Fey. Father Carden led the charge, eyes fixed on vengeance. “Bring me the witch! Find her! Hunt her down!”
Nimue threw herself against a tent as two Red Paladin horsemen blew past her. She ran back onto the pathway but had to duck down again as a cluster of Pendragon soldiers surged out of the mist, fighting back on their heels against Red Paladins on foot and on horseback. She was trying to get her bearings when hands snatched her from behind. Nimue swung her fist around but Merlin caught it with his hand.
“The camp is overrun. Follow me. Sure and steady.” Merlin turned to go, but Nimue yanked her arm back.
“We’re not leaving.”
“Nimue, don’t be a fool!”
But she would not hear it. She turned back into the fog and into the heat of the fighting. Merlin cursed and had no choice but to pursue her.
“Father Carden! Father Carden!” A trio of Red Paladins waved the mist away as they dragged a beaten Morgan into the torchlight. “We’ve got the witch! We’ve got her!”
Father Carden pushed through a crowd of Red Paladins to see what they had brought him. When he saw Morgan, he grimaced. “Fools, this is not her.”
“She has the sword!” one of the Red Paladins claimed. Another brought forward the blade she had kept in her saddle.
“No, no! You bastards!” Morgan cried, fighting wildly in her captors’ arms.
Curious, Father Carden took the sword and freed it from its binding. The blade gleamed in the moonlight. “Gods,” he whispered. He turned it and examined the filigree on the blade and the rune on the pommel. “It is the sword,” Carden said, smiling, eyes blazing. “It is the Devil’s Tooth!” he proclaimed, and the Red Paladins gave up a roar as Father Carden held it aloft victoriously. “We have it!”
“Carden!” Nimue screamed.
Father Carden and the Red Paladins turned—stunned—to Nimue, who stepped through the fog, Merlin trailing behind her, still instinctivel
y, yet futilely, pulling at her arm to prevent her from walking into the mouth of the lion.
Father Carden twirled the sword in his hand in a mocking gesture. “Blessings be upon us, brothers. The good Lord rains gifts upon us.” He turned to Nimue. “Whatever will you do without your precious sword? Seize her,” he said to his paladins.
As Red Paladins took hold of her and Merlin, Nimue snarled, “I don’t need a sword to deal with you!”
A rat suddenly ran over Carden’s boot. He kicked it off, startled. Several more rats ran out of tents and out of the fog, darting between the Red Paladins’ legs. In the air, the torches became beacons for clouds of bats, fluttering angrily. The rats grew more aggressive, climbing up the robes of the paladin holding Nimue and biting through the cloth.
“Ah! Ah!” the Red Paladin screamed, and Nimue wriggled free of his grasp.
“Nimue!” Merlin shouted.
But she fought her way across the mud as the rats parted around her boots and hungrily swarmed the legs of the Red Brothers.
Father Carden could not see Nimue approach because a wave of biting flies had gone for his eyes. He furiously tried to wipe them clean as the flies invaded his ears and mouth and nostrils. He coughed and gagged. “Kill her! Kill her! Strike her down!”
Then Nimue locked her hands over Carden’s. She fought him for the sword.
