by C J Brown
Pendragon
and
Merlin's Tomb
C.J. Brown
Pendragon Legend
Book One
Copyright © 2021 by C.J. Brown.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
1. Battle Royale
2. Barbarians at the Gate
3. Five Dragons
4. Preparing for Battle
5. Lookout Ridge
6. Palatine Hill
7. Krampus Rerouted
8. Cowardice in the Flesh
9. Interrogation
10. News From Rome
11. Attila the Hun
12. Into the City
13. Bishkar’s Rise
14. Black Moon Rising
15. Peeling
16. Valley of Death
17. Vanished
18. The Enchanted Forest
19. Voyage
Newsletter
About the Author
For my parents, who always encouraged my creativity
1
Battle Royale
With balls of fire raining down on his troops, Arthur galloped to the front of the line. His cavalry on the left flank was now all but decimated. The one on his right, in the distance, was being routed. In moments, his men would be outflanked and the crushing blow to the tenth cohort of foot soldiers on the left would be complete. The men in the first cohort on his farthest right would soon be slaughtered by the sword-wielding cavalry of the enemy. With the flanks destroyed, Arthur knew that it would spell the end of the campaign.
Arthur was greeted upon reaching the front line with a spear that found its way into the chest of his mighty horse. With a loud cry, Boadicea, Arthur’s trusted stallion, collapsed as his front legs buckled in pain. With no time to mourn his friend, Arthur leaped. Sword raised in flight, he descended on his quarry like the fist of God. With a swift blow, Arthur split the head of the soldier who had the misfortune of being in front of him. The metal of the helmet and the bone of his skull were no match against the steel of Arthur’s sword.
Each body he slayed, every foot he pushed forward, allowed his army to weaken the front lines of the enemy. The cavalry was already lost. If they could just hold and protect the main mass of men, then they could penetrate the heart of the enemy and win the day. There was still a way to win this—the hardest battle of his young life.
Or so he thought.
As hope began to fill his heart and power his arms, a spear, launched from a catapult, found the blood-stained armor that protected his chest. As the tip of the spear ripped the metal of the armor, the crashing sound of iron on iron silenced the rest of the battle as Arthur watched, in apparent slow motion, and felt it bury itself into his chest. The sudden searing pain exploding from the point of impact rushed to his mind and jolted him out of a deep slumber, soaked in sweat.
Sitting in his bed, he watched as the fire in the hearth across from him burned brightly. As heir to the house of Pendragon, Arthur had the right to the largest chamber in the garrison’s northern tower, but he chose more humble lodgings, amidst the men he fought with. His only luxury was this large fire now burning a few feet from him.
Arthur peered down at his chest that glistened with sweat. A sense of relief washed over him as he realized that the spear was part of a dream. In the neighboring quarters, the neighing of his horse—that distinctive snort of a thoroughbred, comforted him once more. It had indeed been a dream.
His muscles, still tight from the tense experience, took a moment to relax as he lowered his head into his hands. It might not have been real, and he was still alive, but the dream itself happened, and that was not a good omen. Pulling his tunic from the foot of his bed, he slipped into it and got out from between the thick layers of fur that kept him warm on the cold winter nights of northern Italy.
His caligae lay beside his bed, worn from heavy use, but still sturdy. They had thick soles and heavy leather straps that crisscrossed their way up to his knees. He strapped them on and stood up, moving to his heavy wooden stand where the rest of his ensemble hung. Donning his armor, he looked around the room for his cloak. His eyes caught sight of it on the chair behind his table. Papers on the table lay strewn across, covering every inch of the wood beneath it. Drawings and notes of the fortress’s current expansion littered his table.
He glanced at them. The next morning, he would continue to oversee the extension of the southern wall. His father planned on raising a third legion in the northeast, after the expansion of his first legion, Gaul Fortis, in Genua. Genua was a much better place to be, Arthur thought. It sat nestled in a cove off the Mediterranean Sea and had a more suitable climate. Here, in Verona, on the other hand, which sat at the foothills of the Alps, it was drastically different. Still, he thought, consoling himself, it was better than being further north where his father planned a fourth legion.
Arthur snapped out of his thoughts about the work the next day and returned to the omen he had just viscerally experienced. There was something about the dream that was unnerving. Igraine, his mother, had always told him about the intangible forces that played in the background. She taught him about omens and spirits and how they were a part of a world that was greater than just wealth and conquest.
Fully dressed, he marched out of his quarters. The early dawn air was cold and damp. Somewhere in the distance, it rained. While unusual for this time of the year, showers were not unheard of. From where he stood, he couldn’t see the men who were supposed to be on the garrison walls, nor the ones in the towers that marked the four corners of the structure. None of the soldiers on watch seemed to be patrolling the ramparts they were assigned to. It was desolate and deserted. Instead, the men were asleep.
Battles had not been fought at the garrison or in Verona, nearby, for more than a few years. As Rome’s influence fell, fewer altercations on the border erupted. There were lesser wars being fought as the emperor was not intent on conquering, but on defending his illegitimate throne.
Taking a deep breath and releasing a sigh at the lack of discipline in the early morning guards, Arthur made his way to the stone steps of the first tower on the southwest corner of the wall. He found men asleep at their posts all along the route that he used to ascend the top of the wall. There here found more men in blissful slumber.
With no fires blazing nearby, his eyes acclimated to the night sky. The cold wind from the north brushed past his face and swept his hair as it moved south, chilling the lands below it. In the distance, the white peaks of the Alps hid, obscured by the dark clouds of the impending storm.
He found the captain of the night watch sleeping at his station, on par with the men under his command.
“Captain!” Arthur boomed, shaking the man out of his slumber and causing him to nearly fall off his chair.
“My lord,” he stuttered, half asleep, and half ashamed.
“Does this happen every night?”
The captain could not add to his shame by lying. “Yes, my lord. I am sorry. It just gets so quiet and boring and the men just fall asleep inadvertently.”
“Well, it’s not entirely their fault.”
&nbs
p; “No, my lord, it is mine.”
“That’s not what I meant, Captain. The men have had nothing to do for years and so there has been no urgency for discipline.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“But that’s about to change, Captain,” Arthur whispered, as he pointed to the slopes of the northeastern sky.
Urgency displaced the effects of early morning slumber as adrenaline pushed all measure of complacency out of him. As lightning struck, illuminating the lands, an invasion party lining the ridges made itself known.
“Keep things quiet. Do not blow the horn or beat the drums. We shall prepare in silence.”
“Yes, my lord,” the captain replied, quickly getting on his feet and making his way to the soldiers’ quarters.
Arthur stood on the parapets, using each flash of lightning to gather intelligence of the army that lined the horizon. The best he could guess was that there were a thousand men who lined the periphery of vision. He calculated that to be about ten thousand men in total. The number that lay behind the ridge would not be visible and thus it was a good guess that there were ten thousand, double of what he had to command amongst the men who slept quietly.
“They will attack at dawn,” he whispered to himself, concluding correctly that the tribes of Germania always waited for sunlight to attack. Checking the clepsydra—the water clock at the night station—he calculated that dawn was an hour away. The garrison usually needed three hours to deploy, but that was when they were fully awake. Now they would need more.
2
Barbarians
at the Gate
The barbarian army arrived just before dawn. Gradually, they amassed under the cover of darkness until the full might of twenty thousand men lined the ridge of the northern slopes. In the valley below, a silent town lay before them. A decidedly ominous day would unfold as soon as the sun found its way past the horizon if the Huns were not stopped.
Twenty thousand men, draped in thick fur coats and clad in heavy iron armor, brandished their weapons with ease and extreme prejudice. Ahead of them, stood the first wave—the expendables, men not worth the mud they stood on. They were no more than slaves, tasked with absorbing the brunt of the opposing army on the field of battle. Their only purpose was to slow the opposing army by dying.
Amongst this group of expendables was a mismatch of ability and appearance. Some were short and stocky, others were thin and lanky. Farmers and bakers in another life, they stood shoulder to shoulder scared for what lay ahead but even more so of what lay behind.
They stood there, women and children amidst their ranks, against their will, and assembled as prisoners from villages the army had sacked. They were the second tier, dressed in a hodge-podge of attire. Some were not lucky enough to have warm clothing, others were even worse without any semblance of armor. The ones who did possess heavy iron to protect vulnerable flesh were considered fortunate. Among them, some wielded swords, others carried spears, harvested and sacked from their defeated enemies along a trail of destruction that spanned for their native land in the north.
This dual-layered attack posture had been successful over the last thousand miles and a dozen years. Every village they sacked provided them with food for the men, and more men for their front lines. The king got to keep the gold they sacked, while soldiers got to keep everything else, including the women of the village.
Behind them, they left a wake of destruction, marked by smoke from the smoldering ashes, broken bones of men who dared resist, and the shrieks of the old who were left amidst the devastation. The barbarian horde was ruthless in many respects, and the path they had carved through the countryside was evidence of that.
The clear skies of moments ago quickly filled with rain clouds, and quicker still, began to threaten a wet morning. With banners streaming in the wind, drenched in rain that now poured in droves, the silhouettes of a fearsome invading horde began to appear as the lightning flashed in rapid succession. As thunder clapped and the winds howled, sheets of torrential rain lashed the countryside, turning the meadows of summer into a pit of black mush.
Between the ridge where they stood and the pit of mush below, the rough terrain of northern Italy unfolded before them, flashing into view each time the lighting from the gods struck the ground and lit the scene. It was more apparent now than it had ever been for Adolphus, supreme general of the invading horde, that this was not a battle to be undertaken.
Something about the calm in the valley disturbed him.
Wet and cold, the heavens had chosen to make this campaign a difficult one, Adolphus believed. A superstitious man, he would always seek the security of rituals and the direction of omens in addition to the intelligence reports his riders brought back. This was much to his king’s fury, as the latter was not a superstitious man. But still, the king gave him the room he needed. After all, Adolphus was undefeated. His strategies were sound, his execution, perfect.
As the barbarian army marched toward their quarry, they had done so with singular focus. The hundreds of cities they sacked and plundered along the way were designed for one purpose alone—to bulk up the army that would eventually reach the gates of Rome, the capital of the largest empire the world had ever seen.
Now only a fortnight’s ride from the outer gates of the Roman capital, Adolphus began to focus on every aspect, and worry about every detail. The Huns had never ventured this far south, and even though Adolphus had navigated this campaign with a deft hand, the true test of the campaign was imminent. From the rear, his king would arrive in three days.
Ahead, the Roman legions loyal to Uther Pendragon sat beyond the town. There was only one thing in the world he was more afraid of than the fury of his own king, and it was the mind of Arthur.
Towering at seven feet tall, Arthur Pendragon was a giant once he mounted his Berber horse. Clasped in his armor, the sight of him stoked fear in the hearts of anyone who saw him lead the charge in battle. Never to be the one to stand on the hill, detached from the battle, Pendragon always fought with his men, and that earned him the loyalty and respect of every legionnaire across the provinces of the empire.
A nagging thought festered in the depths of his subconscious. Hardened in military campaigns for his entire adult life, and at the hilt of a sword since the age of eight, Adolphus could not shake the instinct that forewarned a problem. The Romans could not be so daft, he thought. This new emperor, he knew, lived high on the success of men who had gone before him. He was not the greatest of generals in battle, even though he was a schemer. But even he could not have been so foolish to not know that an army of twenty thousand barbarians was descending upon him.
Silence in the village below and darkness in the garrison beyond only meant they had succeeded in their clandestine intent. Or it could be that a trap was being set. Adolphus had to figure out which. If it was the latter, Adolphus had to figure out what that trap was and foil it. But he also knew that with his king only three days from arriving, he only had free reign for a limited time. The arrival of his king also meant the arrival of another ten thousand men. Thirty thousand battle-hardened soldiers bursting through the gates of Rome would put Emperor Lucius on his back heels. Once Rome fell, the rest of the empire would follow suit.
3
Five Dragons
The morning hours, squeezed
between the revelry of the night prior and the business of governing an empire the next morning presented an uncharacteristic silence as Rome slept. The scheming of the Senate, the debauchery of the bathhouses, and the treachery of the Imperial Palace had all taken the respite they desperately needed.
In the distance, under the shadow of the mighty Colosseum, a true Roman sat in his seat, his eyes fixed on the horizon where flames lit the perimeter of the Imperial Palace. In the light of day, Palatine Hill represented a sore reminder of events that changed the course of his family’s history.
“This must not stand,”
he whispered, with his wife standing beyond earshot.
The canter of a fast-approaching Berber echoed clearly in the distance against that backdrop of pre-activity silence, prompting a swift alteration of his countenance.
“The rider approaches,” he began, indicating that his wife now execute the plan they had devised in anticipation of his arrival.
A look of determination and fear mingled across the gentle features of Ingraine’s countenance.
“I will be ready by the time he arrives,” she said, moving with a little more haste in her preparations than a few moments earlier.
For his part, Uther, the patriarch of the family and the rightful heir to the throne, alighted from his chair and donned his breastplate. His coat of arms, emblazoned with five dragons coiled around the noble bay leaf wreath, signified the proud house of the five dragons.
Under that, his ceremonial lorica segmentata had already been in place since he prepared for the events that were about to unfold. The segmentata, consisting of the steel body armor that wrapped around the seven-foot man’s torso, had never seen the blood of battle. His attire this morning was purely ceremonial. It was what he wore when in the audience of Emperor Lucius.
Each segment of the armor had been polished to a high shine. Not a single scratch tarnished it. Not a single smudge robbed it of its luster. In the light of the fire that burned fiercely in the hearth of the dining room, Uther Pendragon sent shimmering light to all corners of his palatial home. His tunic beneath the armor was a bright crimson, made from the best wool Italy could procure. Not a single stitch was out of place and it fit his frame like a glove.
The breastplate was uncommon among the soldier class and seen on most generals. But Uther was not the same as those men. He was the tip of the spear, the patriarch of a long line of emperors. His father, Constantine III, was the founder of the House of Pendragon and grandson to Emperor Constantine, the protector of the Roman Catholic Church.