Arthur Rex: Volume One

by J A Cummings

  Brastias rushed forward and leaped from his mount onto Arthur’s, grappling the young man and bearing him down to the ground. They rolled with the momentum, both of them jarred by the fall, but Arthur came up first, straddling Brastias with his sword across his throat.

  “Yield!” he commanded through clenched teeth.

  “I yield.”

  Bedivere attacked him then, swinging his sword toward Arthur’s unprotected back. Arthur flinched and dodged aside, and Bedivere barely was able to keep from beheading Brastias, who glared at his friend for the near miss. Arthur shield-bashed Bedivere and knocked him down, putting his boot onto the wrist that held the sword and standing there as Kay came rushing forward on foot, a spear in his hands. Arthur cleaved the spear in two and stood tall, his shield before him, his sword at the ready, his vanquished attackers at his feet.

  Brastias rose with a broad smile while Merlin applauded from his bench. Arthur watched warily as the older knight approached.

  “Stand down,” Brastias said. “It is done. I yielded and on my honor, I will not attack you again….today, anyway.”

  “Get off my arm,” Bedivere grumbled. Arthur removed his foot.

  Sir Ector stepped forward and reclaimed his war hammer from the ground. He looked at Illtyd, who nodded. Brastias smiled.

  “He’s ready.”

  He heard the Beast.

  It was somewhere up ahead, shuffling through the brush, sniffing at the trees. Its stench and the rumbling noise that its insides made reached him on the still air, and he was ready for this madness to be over. He would slay the thing. This time, it would not escape him.

  King Pellinore gripped his sword until his palm ached, his eyes pinned on the rustling greenery ahead. The Melltith, the Questing Beast, his curse… it was just ahead of him, ignorant of his approach. He could hear it feeding on the sedge, its teeth gnashing together with a grinding sound that haunted his dreams. Even when he slept, curled up under his cloak in some roadside campsite, he was not free of this monster. It filled every moment of his life.

  All through the coldest part of winter, he had pursued it. He had chased it from his home by the sea through mountains and forests, over flatlands full of mud and into the moors. Once, in northern Cornwall, he had wounded it, and he had tracked its blood in the snow for days until the monster eluded him once more. He had ridden his horse to death, and he continued on foot, too driven to stop. Through rain and sleet he had tracked it, sleeping rough and cursing the day the Melltith had come into his life. Most of all, he cursed the Irish, especially the Morholt and that bitch queen Iseult, both of whom he had sworn to see dead before he left this world.

  His wife would have borne their child by now. Son or daughter, he did not know, and would not know until he could return. He had no choice but to pursue the Melltith, to try to take it at last, and all he could think of and all he could see were Melltith tracks and Melltith spoor and the hope of one day slaying the beast once and for all.

  In the clouds, when he looked at the sky, he saw the Melltith looking back. In the bubbling of brooks tumbling over rocks, he heard the sound the monster’s gullet made, distinctive and unpleasant, gurgling like illness. When the birds took sudden flight from the trees, it was because the Melltith had disturbed them. It was everywhere he looked and in everything he touched, and he could eat no food that did not taste of it.

  Now, at last, in the warming light of mid-spring, the monster was in his sights.

  He crept a step closer, and the Melltith raised its broad and misshapen head, its twisted nose sniffing at the air. It bleated and belched like a dyspeptic sheep and shifted its massive weight in anxiety. He knew it had scented him, and he roared as he burst out of the brush. The Melltith bellowed in distress and reeled away, dodging his attack and racing off into the wood with more agility than a creature of its shape and size should have attained. He gave chase.

  The wood was tangled with thick black vines, but he was able to keep his footing as long as he stayed focused on his quarry. The Melltith careened around the boles of trees, the bark black and wet where it passed, and Pellinore was right behind it. He skidded around a thick oak, his armor shattering low and slender branches he did not take the time to push aside. The forest seemed to moan around him, distressed by the passage of his monstrous prey.

  The vines began to move, as alive as snakes, and he leaped free as they attempted to enwrap his leg. He chopped at them with his sword, and another vine dropped from overhead and entangled his arm. He tried to hack at that vine, too, but it was joined by another, and another, coiling around his arms and neck and hauling him off the ground. Soon he was suspended in clinging vines, stinking and black like decay, and he roared in impotent fury as the monster escaped him once again.

  A flame-haired woman stepped out of the shadows, clad in a cloak made of raven feathers. She pushed back her hood, revealing a youthful and beautiful face made unpleasant by the cruel smile she wore.

  “King Pellinore,” she said. “Welcome to the Perilous Forest. You are in my territory now.”

  He struggled against the vines, but they held him ever harder. “Sorceress,” he spat. “Release me!”

  “Not until you vow to serve me for a year and a day.”

  Pellinore flailed, but the vines wrapped tighter. His feet and hands were going numb, and one black creeper that had coiled around his neck began to constrict. He swallowed his fear and his pride.

  “A year and a day,” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “I have your word that you will release me, sworn upon whatever it is that you hold holy?”

  She smiled. She was lovely in the way of all poisonous things. “I swear that I will release you after a year and a day in my service, if you survive.”

  He ground his teeth, and the vegetation held him more firmly. He began to choke. With the wind leaving him, he gasped, “I swear it.”

  The vines dropped him immediately, and he fell to the ground at her feet. She watched him with amusement as he struggled to catch his breath. He looked up at her with pure animosity in his eyes.

  “What do you want of me?”

  She answered, “There is a well near here that is mine and mine alone. I have a pavilion next to it, and a green space cleared. I want you to hold it against all comers. None may drink from that well unless I give permission. All others who attempt to cross my green, or drink from my well, shall pay the price for their insolence with their deaths at your hands. For a year and a day, you will defend my water and my well, and if you survive, then I will let you go as you were before...and perhaps with something to help you in your quest.”

  “And those who defeat me, if any are able to? What happens to them?”

  “Then they inherit your task and they must stay in my service until a year and a day passes.”

  He stood. “Where is this well?”

  The woman stepped forward and touched his beard, grown long and untidy in the months of his pursuit. She studied his face. “You are a comely man, if dirty. Let me wash you and restore you to your kingly grace, Pellinore of Norgalis.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Of course.”

  “And who are you? Am I permitted to know the name of my new mistress?”

  She smiled. “Your mistress I may be in time, but for now I will be your lady. You may call me Annowre.” She drew back. “Follow me.”

  As she walked away, he realized that even if he had wanted to, he could not have disobeyed her command. His feet began to follow her of their own volition, and he could not have stopped or turned. With a heavy heart, he followed where she led.

  King Lot’s favorite broch stood hard on a promontory on the largest of the Orkney Islands. Morgana stood at the edge of the cliff, her eyes closed, arms outstretched, the wind blowing through her hair. She was damp with sea spray, pale as a ghost, and in her belly the child of Gadrosalain was growing.

  She and Morgause and her sister’s youngest boy had come here w
hen the winter broke, a place where she could hide her bastard pregnancy and give birth in seclusion. She dreaded the coming pain, the ripping of her body and the agony and the blood. She already hated the child with a fury.

  Lot was none the wiser about her condition, which was well. He would have contrived to use the child somehow for his own benefit, and if this brat was going to be used, she would be the one to do it.

  Morgause approached, wrapped in a dark cloak to shelter against the icy wind from the North Sea. Morgana needed no such protection. She reveled in the cold. It made her feel more alive when the air made her cheeks hurt and brought tears to her eyes. The power of it was invincible, and one day, with the tutelage of Murduus and her own dear sister, she would be invincible, too.

  “Come in,” Morgause told her. “It’s time to eat, and it will soon be dark.”

  “I don’t want to eat.”

  “You must. You must keep up your strength for the ordeal ahead.”

  Morgana dropped her arms and faced her sister. “I want to bear this child now and end it. I want to be rid of this creature.”

  Morgause smirked. “I know, but you still have five months to go before he comes, unless you fancy taking a knife and cutting him free now.”

  The younger woman’s eyes grew bright. “Do you have ways to keep me living if that is what we do?”

  “Of course, but I do not recommend it.”

  “Can you reach into me and scrape it out, take it from me that way?”

  “I have such skill, but it will hurt,” she warned. “Is that really what you want?”

  “We are going to murder this child anyway. Why wait until it is larger and the birthing hard? Take it now and let it be done.”

  A whisper of sulfur tickled her nose, and her invisible master said, “I care not when you offer me his life, but see that you offer it carefully. If the child is not given in the ritual, its soul is of no use to me.”

  “Then let us begin the ritual and cut this child free,” Morgana urged. “I hate it. I loathe it. I want its soul to go to you, my master!”

  Morgause put her hands on her sister’s arms. “A little longer, dear. Let it grow. The longer it lives, the stronger its power, and the greater the gift.”

  “Endure this for me,” Murduus promised, “and I will reward you tenfold for all of your pains. You will have power to spare if you serve me as I ask.”

  She hesitated and looked down at the white water frothing around the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. The sea was always in turmoil, yet sailors still crossed it safely. She would one day be one of those ships, aloof to the strife of shifting tides and using the changes to her advantage. Murduus and Morgause would show her how.

  “I will endure it,” she said softly. “Until the beast is born.”

  A gentle invisible claw stroked her face, and Morgause smiled at her in knowing approval. Her sister put her arm around her and gathered her in.

  “Now, Morgana,” she said. “Come inside.”

  They left from Mons Badonicus for Salisbury Plain on a fine bright day in spring when the sun was already hot as summer. Sir Brastias led the way, leaving his wife behind with a kiss and a promise to return. Arthur could still see her weeping by the gate, her hand over her not-yet-swelling stomach, and he vowed to himself that he would send her husband back to her before the child was born.

  They rode in twos along the track, their group spread out in the relaxed ease of their travel. It was difficult to feel any sort of urgency when the sun was golden and the fields were full of wildflowers, buzzing with bees making the next moon’s honey. Griflet rode beside Arthur, and they were quiet, listening to the birds singing and the frogs croaking in a nearby creek. A fox bounded through the meadow, pausing to look back at them before it continued with its mouse-chasing.

  “Beautiful country,” Arthur said finally, breaking the silence.

  Griflet looked at him with a smile. “Yes, it is.” He looked out over the field they were crossing, at the distant forms of farmers working the soil and at the greenwood beyond them. “Worth dying for, I think.”

  “More than that,” the young dux bellorum objected. “Worth living for.”

  “There’s a distinction?”

  “I think so.” Arthur patted his horse’s neck, and it snorted softly in response, bobbing its head. Its ear swiveled back to listen to him. “I think dying is easy, especially if you die quickly. Living, though, is harder. It requires thought and effort, and emotion and decisions. Living is something that you do for other people and for the health of your country. Dying is what you do for yourself.”

  They fell silent again, and then Griflet chuckled. “That’s a load of pretentious bollocks. Shut up.”

  Arthur laughed. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” his squire said. “You’re so full of great big ideas and big talk, and you’re getting so impressed with yourself. But you’re just full of shit! You sound ridiculous.” He snorted. “Listen to this rot. A fifteen-year-old who thinks he knows what life and death are all about.”

  “Sixteen,” he corrected.

  “What was that?”

  “I’m sixteen.”

  “Oh, all right. Vast difference. My apologies.” Griflet gave him a sidelong look and a bright grin. “Can’t you just be like any other boy our age and say, ‘eh, nice day, innit?’”

  Arthur chuckled. “Fine. I was trying to be philosophical.”

  “Save it for the worthies,” his friend said. “This is me you’re talking to.”

  They rode on for a moment. Behind Sir Brastias’s lead, Sir Ector, who was riding six feet ahead beside Lucan, turned in the saddle to look back at them, then at Illtyd and Bedivere, who were behind. He straightened, and Arthur smiled.

  “He’s so nervous. He’s sure we’re going to be attacked on the road.”

  Griflet looked at Arthur. “You sound calm. You don’t think we’ll be ambushed?”

  “Not in the daylight. After that, it will be a different matter.”

  “Nobody fights in the dark, Arthur. You can’t see.”

  “We’ll have a fire that will help them see well enough, and I happen to know that at least a few of our companions have fought in the dark before,” he said. He thought back to the midnight raid on Pryderi’s camp, and the gift of a dagger he had received. “It might not be military, but you don’t need a phalanx of soldiers when you’re just planning to assassinate one man.”

  “You think that there’s going to be an attempt on your life in the dark while we’re in camp?” Griflet frowned.

  “Does it worry you?”

  “No. It’s not me they’re after.” He glanced at Arthur and smiled.

  “Well, it’s my head they’ll be coming for, so I’ll worry about it when we make camp.”

  “Go ahead and worry, then,” Griflet shrugged. “It won’t do anything but keep you awake at night. You already don’t sleep worth a damn.”

  Arthur raised an eyebrow. “How would you know?”

  “I’m your squire and we share a room, idiot.”

  “Are you going to keep talking to me that way after I’m crowned?”

  “Probably.”

  He looked at him, smiling. “Good.”

  The news had spread all through the center of the country that the enchanted stone with its sword would be at the massive stone monument they called the Giant’s Dance. Nobody remembered who had made the circle, or how they had balanced the lintels atop the stones so high overhead, but everyone knew that it was a place of magic. It was one of those places, and Britannia was full of them, where this world and the world of the fey overlapped. There were those who said that the world of the dead held a corner of the field, too, somewhere between the bluestones and the ditches. The majesty of the place was undeniable, but there was something supernatural about it, too, and that aura of strangeness held the more timid folk at bay.

  There were camps set up all around the outside of the circle, and a festival ground of so
rts had sprung up amid the tents. There were men from different tribes contesting in wrestling and axe-throwing, and women were comparing their weaving while children from the Catuvellauni and the Iceni chased each other around the stones. Belgae, Atrebates, Cornovii, Durotriges, Cantiaci and even the Dumnonii from Cornwall had come to assemble in peace and curiosity. They were all gathered together as Britons, old tribal animosities temporarily put aside, while they waited to see the boy who would be their king.

  Brastias led them to the square red tent of the chieftain of the Atrebates, his own tribe. He dismounted and told them, “Stay here a moment while I make introductions.”

  Merlin, who had rejoined their little company the day before, nodded and dismounted as well. He took the halter from his horse’s head and let the animal roam where it would. Bedivere sat back and watched as Brastias disappeared.

  Arthur looked around at the riot of color and sound that was the camp, and he shook his head in admiration. The tents were a dozen different colors, and amid the chattering voices and happy squeals of the children, he could hear flutes and harps playing lilting tunes. “This country should be like this every day,” he said quietly.

  “By God’s grace and your good leadership, it can be,” Sir Ector said. “I know it.”

  Sir Kay smiled. “Look there, Arthur.”

  He looked where his brother pointed. A trio of boys, little more than toddlers, were tumbling in the field with a litter of brown pups too young to run without stumbling. A young blonde woman with a sky-blue dress was watching over them, laughing at the comedic spectacle of child and pup, clapping her slender hands.

  “I see. Adorable.”

  “No, no,” Kay said, shaking his head. “The girl.”

  Arthur looked at his brother and saw a light shining in his eyes that he had never seen, and he smiled. “Have you fallen under Aengus’s spell?” he asked, invoking the name of the old god of youth and love.

  “Not Aengus’s spell,” Kay answered, softly. “Hers. I’m going to marry that girl.”