By Force Alone

by Lavie Tidhar

Uther warms his hands against the fire. The nights are growing longer. It is well known that the world is a sphere. The Greek astronomer, Eratosthenes, had performed complex measures and concluded that the circumference of the world is some two hundred and fifty thousand stades. And Philolaus believed that the Earth spun on an axis. And in the battle between light and dark that spins and spins across the world, Uther, recently crowned king of all this land, nevertheless has an affinity to night, when sun turns its face from the world. For in the darkness one can bring a stealthy death upon one’s enemies.

  It is those enemies that occupy his mind now, and chief among them Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, or anyway that’s how he styles himself, the fat buffoon, a merchant, not worthy of a castle or a crown, how much he’d like to wrap his fingers around the bastard’s throat and squeeze and squeeze. That fat and wealthy land, Belerion, Land’s End, that joshes at the Celtic Sea and leans to Gaul. They mine for tin and trade it with the continent, and have the means to raise an army that made even Roman generals of old think twice.

  He has a deal with Gorlois. Isn’t this the way these things work? You have your patch and I have mine, and no one wants a war, it’s bad for business.

  Only Uther doesn’t like to deal. Uther wants what Gorlois has. It’s always been that simple. And the fat bastard’s the same. Still. The deal holds.

  Then there’s Leir, the clever old man of the ridings, with claims to royal Roman blood, whose power spreads over York and the entirety of the Brigantes. They make fearsome warriors, again, even the Romans feared them. Leir makes his home in no one fixed abode but moves around, and they say he has eyes everywhere.

  For now there’s an understanding.

  Uther warms his hands by the fire and frets, and drinks ale. The Earth spins, the nights lengthen, and soon it will be winter, but not yet. And he is king.

  *

  Fort Constantine, at last, feels like the jewel in the crown. The bustling city makes one think of empire. The roads are clean, the markets bustling, the harbour is alive with ships both foreign and domestic. Across the strait is Druid’s Island, with its sacred groves and menhirs. He has no fear of druids, who Tiberius and Claudius both hated, hunting them until they vanished. Uther relaxes in the public baths, his arms on marble: this is the life, he thinks.

  ‘My lord?’

  It’s Merlin, sliding into the water.

  ‘Yes, wizard?’

  ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘I thought I’d have a drink, followed by women,’ Uther says.

  The wizard sighs. ‘I don’t mean now.’

  ‘I know just what you meant.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘I want this land united under one authority, Merlin,’ Uther says.

  ‘Your own.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You need money. Men. You need arms.’

  ‘Can you magic them for me, boy?’

  ‘Lord, for what you want, you don’t need wizardry, you just need swords.’

  ‘I know, you fool.’

  ‘But I’ll be by your side.’

  ‘I know that, too.’

  He’d grown accustomed to the little wizard. A knife’s a dangerous toy, but it is useful. And he knows Merlin, has known things like Merlin. They’re drawn to power, feed on it. There is a trust in knowing that you cannot trust them. But you can use them, even as they think they’re using you.

  ‘This daughter-wife of Vortigern’s,’ says Uther. ‘She’s hidden well. My men can find no sign or trace of her.’

  ‘My liege?’

  ‘I cannot have’ – he waves a hand – ‘usurper brats running around. Perhaps you’ll see if you can find her?’

  ‘Of course, my lord.’

  ‘Then go.’

  The little wizard vanishes. Uther relaxes in the public baths. A rare luxury, these days. Civilisation. He’d only heard the stories of how Britain used to be under the Romans. Now Londinium’s a shithole, the roads lie unmaintained, the courier network’s a distant memory, and good luck sending any mail. If it were up to him he’d clean the aqueducts and build new sewers, maybe start a library to rival those of Alexandria and Antioch. Well. He would do those things, perhaps, but where are the engineers to fashion sewers or the archivists to catalogue dusty old scrolls? Gone, gone with the empire, and he, the king, has better things to do. How can he build when he must rule first, how can he rule when there are men still who oppose his will?

  It’s much to think of.

  Uther relaxes into the warm piped water.

  8

  Merlin steps out into the streets of Fort Constantine. The sun in the sky shines most pleasantly. A heavyset flower seller stands at a street corner and smiles at him, most pleasantly. He buys a primrose and inhales its scent – it is most pleasant, he thinks.

  Merlin struts down to the sea. Along the harbour, stalls are set and fish are sold, but he is drawn to an upturned crate and a shifty-looking man and a game of dice. Merlin puts down coin and picks up dice. He throws, contemptuously.

  ‘Two sixes. Pay.’

  ‘Triple for a snake eyes.’

  ‘Call.’

  He throws. The man stares at the dice.

  ‘Pay,’ Merlin says.

  ‘Double or nothing, all bets are final, player’s call,’ the dice man says.

  ‘A crucifixion,’ Merlin says. He throws.

  A double three, two lines intersecting, form a cross. The dice man pulls a knife instead of paying, but Merlin laughs, snatches the money on the crate and runs. He loves to gamble and he loves to cheat, and as long as games of chance exist and men will play them, then he would never lack for coin.

  It was in this manner, of a sort, that Vortigern’s embittered wizards found him. For Vortigern, the usurper, had asked his astrologers and witchers to cast a spell of protection for him against the coming of Uther, his enemy. And so the astrologers worked their spells and incantations, and then declared that only blood would serve. Blood!

  The useless fools, thinks Merlin.

  Blood? the usurper says.

  The blood of a youth born without mortal father, smeared on the foundations of the castle, the witchers say.

  And where might such a youth be found? Away they go, these ruffians, to hunt for one with foreign blood in him.

  That day, and he was running, he was being chased by other boys who jeered and cried and threw stones at him, calling him every name under the sun – ‘Go! Go back to your eldritch father, Thing, go back to the realm of gnomes and sprites!’

  How they spat at him, how they would have done him harm had not the witchers and their soldiers stopped them. Instead they shackled him and brought him back to Vortigern.

  He smiles now, remembering, but his smile is bitter. He steals an apple from a cart and skips to shore and pays for passage. He has unfinished business over yonder on Druid Island.

  *

  It’s a big island, a kingdom unto itself. The Romans, when they came, tore down the sacred groves and executed druids, built forts and mined for copper. Since their departure, Irish pirates had made it into their stronghold, but old Vortigern and local chieftains fought them off, at last. Now it’s just an island. Merlin likes islands. He loves the sense of security of being surrounded by water. He loves the sea, its fathomless depths, where strange blind creatures swim in eternal darkness. He loves its moods, its unpredictability, its lethal reach, he loves the song the drowned men sing and the whisper of the water through their bones, he loves to dive and close his eyes and listen to the whales cry out across the thousands of oceanic miles. There’s magic in the sea.

  There’s magic everywhere you look. Just pluck a leaf and hold it to the light. How magical it is. That it is there, how it had formed and how it grows. There’s magic in a stone – oh, yes, he knows his stones. There’s magic in the earth and in the sky and in the heavens. He drops the leaf. He walks unhurried. Off the Roman road, deeper into the interior of the island. He has no obvious destination in mind, n
o visible purpose. Yet minute things decide his journey. A scratch on the bark of a yew tree there. A patch of meadowsweet there, where a corpse might be buried. Ah, there, a menhir, twice taller than a man. Ah, there, an apple grove. He picks a wizened apple from the ground and bites into the flesh and finds a worm. He sucks it in and lets it wriggle in his mouth. A tiny vestige of the power such as Uther has. It’s like a delicacy. He hesitates, to spit the worm out or to swallow.

  ‘Don’t fucking move, Merlin,’ a voice says.

  Figures come into the clearing in the orchard where he stands. They’re robed and armed, and two have thick and bushy beards, one has a scar and lacks an eye, another is a woman.

  Merlin swallows.

  ‘You have some nerve.’

  ‘Is that you, Caradoc?’ Merlin says. ‘Didn’t recognise you there without your eye.’

  The disfigured man scowls. The woman laughs – a sound like a knife against a whetstone.

  ‘Darling Merlin,’ she says. ‘Always so droll.’

  ‘Nimue. I have no fight with you.’

  ‘Indeed?’ she murmurs.

  ‘Lady, this company does not befit you.’

  She smiles. Her eyes remind him of a fish, her teeth are needle-like.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she says.

  ‘I come in service of my lord.’

  ‘You’re awfully confident, little wizard–’ from one of the gruff and bearded men.

  ‘Nennius. It’s been a while.’

  ‘Not long enough, you little shit.’

  The woman, Nimue, looks at them. Her eyes meet Merlin’s. She nods, an almost imperceptible gesture.

  ‘Boys, I’ll leave you to your games.’

  With that she turns into a crow and flies away. The others turn, with staffs and blades. They grin.

  ‘Three against one seems hardly fair.’

  ‘We missed your blood.’

  And Merlin remembers the long days of his captivity, chained there in the sacred pool under Dinas Emrys.

  Blood for the foundations, they had told their lord. Shed the little freak’s blood, and your castle will stand. And every day one of these men came down the spiral staircase, and every day there was the iron knife. He watched his blood drip slowly into sacred water. He watched the blood, he watched the life.

  ‘Time to finish the job.’

  Then they are upon him. He snarls, his skull shifts shape, his mouth fills with wolf’s teeth. His fur bursts out. He moves with speed, he tears off Caradoc’s ear and Nennius’ quadriceps. He leaps on the third man’s back, Claudius, whose wizardry is of the continent, and tears out his throat and tastes the blood, it tastes of grapes and warmer climes. Wolf-Merlin snarls, the one-eyed man lashes with the iron knife, the wolf howls rage and tears and bites, and blood runs down and soaks the hungry earth of that old sacred grove.

  Nennius backs away, but his bleeding leg won’t let him run. He falls back against an apple tree. The wolf snarls. Then Merlin re-emerges out of that suit of muscles, tendons, blood and guts, and dusts himself, and he looks older now. He stands above his vanquished enemy.

  ‘Well, Nennius? I spoke no lies to your master. My blood helped him not, and his death still came.’

  ‘The castle stands,’ croaks Nennius.

  ‘You fool. The castle stands, but not the head that wore the crown. Your master’s dead. It’s time you joined him in the other world.’

  ‘Then… fucking kill me, freak.’

  ‘That I could do. But there is still the matter of your master’s daughter-wife. Where may I find her, please?’

  ‘Fuck y—’ he screams as Merlin, kneeling, twists a knife into his shoulder.

  ‘I did say please,’ says Merlin.

  Then it is done. It’s quiet there, under the apple trees. The grove, he feels, is grateful for the offerings. He steps over a corpse and reaches down for an apple.

  He takes a bite.

  9

  They ride deep into the mountains and the mountains are wreathed in fog and snow. The horses’ breath forms into whitened shrouds, the tread of hooves is eerie in the silence that the mist creates. After a time the horses slow, then stop and won’t go further.

  ‘Are you sure you have it right, Merlin?’ Uther says.

  ‘It has a dying man’s sincerity behind it.’

  Uther gives him a thin smile. ‘Then lead the way.’

  They walk. The execution party’s small, just Uther, Merlin, two retainers and the page boy, Pellinore. Merlin navigates by scent and recall: here, the smell of a woman’s desperation, here an infant’s cry, here they stopped to argue, here to eat, here – the remnants of a fire, however much disguised.

  Snow falls. The climb is steep. They follow narrow mountain trails, one at a time; the king speaks not, but breathes heavily. He’s armed and ready, and Merlin admires that about him, that ruthless determination that no one and nothing should ever stand in his way. This is no matter of guilt or innocence. To be a king the innocents must die, to be a king the guilty live, to be a king is to be judge and executioner both, and rule by force alone. Merlin can understand that. There are two types of men, those with swords and those without, and Merlin likes the men with swords. You know where you are with one of those.

  He leads the way. The trail grows clearer, stronger, here a crushed flower releasing its scent, here the dried excrement of a child, here, beyond this ravine, the corpse of a handmaiden who fell. And something else, too. Something foul.

  He feels rather than sees the mountain move. The snow above falls in a great big clump of ice. He shouts, ‘Pellinore, move!’ and shoves the page boy in the back. The boy is thrown against the rocks and Uther turns, his sword raised high – ‘Betrayal, Merlin?’

  ‘No, you fool!’

  Then Uther sees it too. The moon, for just a moment, peers behind the clouds. A figure rises from the mountainside, all stones and brambles, ice and rocks and trees. It forms a vaguely human shape the size of a grand dolmen. It roars and gnashes ice in teeth of rock.

  ‘Ogre!’

  They try to duck for cover, but it’s no use. They run, blindly, into the swirling snow, into the rising fog, into the trap that Vortigern’s daughter-wife had set for them. A guardian, and what nefarious trade must she have made to secure such a guardianship?

  ‘Do something, Merlin!’

  But ogres have no love for Merlins and their kind. The druids had it right, of old – ‘How did you gain your crown, lord?’

  ‘With blood—’

  Realisation dawns.

  ‘Not Pellinore.’

  ‘No,’ Merlin says. The ogre swipes at them with fingers made of stout oaks. They duck. ‘But you have those.’

  ‘My men have served me well!’

  ‘Then let them serve you one last time.’

  And Uther sees the logic in the wizard’s words. He must. He draws his blade. Not sword. A knife, a dirty weapon for a dirty deed. Then comes upon his men.

  The knife speaks. The knife makes a compelling argument.

  The storm of rage above them slows. The ogre smells the blood. It’s fresh. It’s good. The ogre likes. A sacrifice. The way it’s right and proper. The ogre leans into the mountainside. Becomes once more a bed of rocks, a copse of trees, a path. The blood soaks into its hide. The ogre sighs. The howling winds make Uther’s flesh run even colder than it is. He follows Merlin up the mountainside. His page boy comes behind him. Two eyes as large as wells blink sleepily at him. Then they are through.

  When they find the place at last it is a temperate valley well hidden within the crevices of Eryri. The snow falls elsewhere. The air is humid. Flowers grow thickly on the slopes. On the valley floor, beside a running stream, there is a lean-to building made of stone, so low they almost miss it. They trudge down the slope, approach with caution. A cooking fire had burned only recently, Uther notes. The door’s a stout oak. He gestures. Merlin shrugs. The wizard puts his hand against the wood and seems to listen. He pushes and the door just opens. The
y go inside, where it is dark, the ceiling low, it smells of stagnant water, mushrooms, moss.

  ‘Step carefully, my lord,’ whispers the wizard.

  But Uther has no fear of orphan-widows. He finds the trapdoor just as he expected. He lifts it up though he must strain his muscles, pulling at the iron ring. A slab of stone and, down below, some cavernous space. But whether it’s an old abandoned mine, or burial ground, or sewer, he doesn’t know. Down they go, with Pellinore above to watch the hole. And down there he finds her, at long last, the daughter-wife of Vortigern. She stands with a staff and tries to ward him off but he is stronger, and he knocks it from her hands and socks her on the chin and drags her back above and to the brook.

  She glares at him. ‘As I die so shall you, you inbred sword-for-hire.’

  ‘Why did you marry him?’ he says.

  ‘I loved him.’

  ‘You wanted power.’ He says it kindly. ‘How will I die, lady?’

  She laughs. ‘For you, I forecast death by water.’

  ‘Then you’ll die by the sword, lady queen.’

  She spits at him. He lifts his sword. He brings it down on her head, the blade cuts through, he splits her open, like a pomegranate.

  ‘Oh, fuck!’

  ‘Get them off, get them off! They’re everywhere!’

  She opens like a husk and from the pod come slithering out snakes, at least a hundred, usurper’s brood, the poisonous little vipers. He stomps upon their tiny skulls and lashes with the sword, he has to catch them all, catch them before they slip away.

  ‘I’m bit! I’m bit!’ – it’s Pellinore. He stares aghast. A snake has fastened on to Pellinore’s arm, it holds on by its poison teeth. The sword moves through the air, the body drops but the snake’s head’s still attached to Pellinore. The boy’s face turns purple. His eyes turn in their sockets. Merlin catches him as he falls. He pulls the head of the snake off. Two nasty marks, but little blood. Yet Pellinore’s arm is swollen. He is infected.

  Uther stomps and stomps with renewed fury on the baby snakes. He loses count of how many he’s killed. Their bodies glisten on the ground, their guts and blood, crushed baby skulls. At last he’s done. He thinks. He breathes heavily. An awful smell, he doesn’t think he’d ever wash this smell off. Snake’s shit, snake’s piss. But nothing moves. Perhaps there’s one who’s playing dead, the way he, Uther, had at Picts’ Wall. He goes methodically, one by one he brings the sword down, one by one until he’s certain every single one of them is dead.