The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy)

by Maples, Kit

  “Arthur’s there?”

  “Your pet is over there, Lady, as speechless as ever. In the lee protection of Badon Hill but within easy range of Saxon arrows and spears. I wonder, if my army’s crushed today, will the Saxon king break Arthur’s bones for sweet marrow or merely stew his giblets in his mother’s milk?”

  “You fool! In none of the histories was Arthur here!”

  “So I rewrite history, this illiterate, barbaric king of the Britons.”

  Uther leaned on his sword, looking across the fields toward the pavilion. Then he said to me, “Does this give you incentive, Old Fright, to do something for your king?”

  I ripped Pagan Eater from its bindings. “Incentive to cut off your head!”

  The war band closed around their lord.

  I shouted, filling with a merlin’s rage, “Do you think a thousand warriors could keep me from crushing one wretched little king?”

  A warlord said, “We invite you to try, Old Woman!”

  He banged his sword on his shield, sending birds chittering up from the trees and driving wandering peasants to cower behind their sergeants.

  Uther said, “Make this last battle a good one for me, Merlin. Send me swooping down on the Saxons. Let me drench myself in their blood before I die. Show them to me, give me the first advantage! Refuse and you let me fail and your pretty Arthur is dead.”

  “Where’s Gurthrygen?” I said, nearly frantic.

  “Where my heir should be. Back home safely among the council of elders ready to be elected my successor if need be.”

  This stupid barbarian had cornered and trapped me.

  “I’ll fight to give you what you want, King,” I said. “But I choose where I’ll fight.”

  “You always do, Lady.”

  “On the windward side of the hill. To protect Arthur.”

  A warlord said, “What’s a second son to any man or woman, least of all you, Princess Merlin, childless and godless and withered as you are? Is the boy enchanted or a godlet? Should we kill him now for good luck in the battle ahead, Uther?”

  I said to Uther, “Alexandrian!”

  “Excellent,” said the king. “I knew you couldn’t resist giving me a subtle hint.”

  “There,” I said, pointing northeast, “is the Saxon army coming at you with the morning sun at their backs.”

  Uther squinted that way, shading his eyes with the blade of his greatsword. “So I let them pass Badon Hill. When I’ve the sun at my back, I attack out of these trees.”

  “On Alexander’s model,” I said. “That’s what the chronicles report.”

  “As modified by Marc Antony against Octavian.”

  “But he lost that battle, King,” said a puzzled warlord.

  “He was an inferior general drunk on Cleopatra’s charms. I’m the Pendragon and my wife has no charms that Lady Merlin doesn’t give her for me.”

  The warlords laughed and shouted to their captains to drive the army into the trees to lie among the roots and wait in ambush.

  * * *

  The Saxon army came across the land in dust and smoke from burning British farmsteads and villages. The lead elements were not scouts but young warriors anxious to get in the first heroic blows of the battle.

  These young men ran down into the field beyond the trees and looked around for Britons. They saw none. They threw themselves on the grass to catch breath. Behind them came the outrunners of the Saxon army shouting in their gargling language at the lazy young warriors ahead.

  The young men jumped up, hauling their spears and their cruel, single-bladed scramasaxes for hacking through metal, and jogged ahead of the scouts.

  Nothing more happened for a time. Then the van of the Saxon army wandered into the field, soldiers staring at the birds and trees, stopping on the trail to piss, kicking clods, chasing each other for sport.

  The number of these wanderers increased. Captains with war bands, banners, and standards came into the field and trudged past Badon Hill, none bothering to look what may be in the trees behind the hill.

  Now came stragglers and blond-braided Saxon women driving caravans of supplies, and Uther saw he had the Saxons in his pincer trap.

  The king howled his war cry and ran out to slaughter the caravaneers.

  Uther led his van cheering across the field and past the pavilion with Arthur and Queen Igerne. Uther saluted her with his bloody sword, this woman my predecessor merlin had helped him rape in a fog to make Arthur.

  He ran into the Saxon flank, pounding and cutting. His war band hacked at Saxons in poorly copied Roman armor, shattering their wooden shields, prodding out their eyes, slashing off their legs, tossing cut hands and heads spinning into the air.

  The Saxons, surprised, sun now in their eyes, surged around Uther, gathering strength as their roaming elements came running to the sound of battle, and the real fight began.

  I found Igerne standing in her pavilion dressed in armor and sword surrounded by her Cornish lifeguards with bundles of throwing and stabbing spears. She was frightened but firm. She had been through battle before.

  Little Arthur, three years old and never having spoken a word, was dressed in gleaming toy armor with a gold headband naming him Duke of Cornwall. Uther’s oldest son, Gurthrygen, stood there with his personal war band of youths, stamping their boots, rattling their shields, calling out to the Saxons to attack the queen’s pavilion so they could fight them.

  “What are you doing here?” I said to Gurthrygen. “You’re meant to be safe with the council of elders.”

  “And miss my father’s last fight, damn him?” cried the boy, swinging his sword over his head in his excitement. “Do they make me king today, Merlin, or what?”

  Igerne cried, “Merlin, is this the end?”

  “Of Lord Uther’s cycle, it is.”

  “Sobeit!” She made the Sign of the Cross. “Thanks to God!” She spat toward Uther’s army.

  Gurthrygen interrupted, shouting at me, “Old Mother, answer me! Do I survive to become king today?”

  “If you’re elected, boy, you’ll be king. If you keep your toy warriors and your little spears here to defend your stepmother and your half-brother. If I stand here between you and the Saxons.”

  “An age-raddled wreck like you protecting me from the Saxons?” Gurthrygen laughed his father’s explosive laugh. “Better you cower here with the queen, Old Woman, and let us march out to win this little brawl.”

  “Stand here with Arthur or this cycle won’t play out as it must,” I said, “and you and the world are ruined.”

  Gurthrygen paled. “I’ll stand. I’ll stand and wait. But only to be king tonight. Promise me that, Merlin!”

  “You’ll be king if you keep yourself and Arthur alive today.”

  “Who cares about Arthur?” said Gurthrygen, puzzled.

  I ran up Badon Hill to gauge the course of battle. I could see the animal in-swarm of the Saxon troops, their infantry and a few horsemen, the stabbing whores, the howling priests, the mail-suited witches. I could tell the Saxon Christian priests by their war clubs that would not spill blood from Thor’s priests with their brain-spattering battle hammers.

  I saw Uther’s van drive deep into the Saxon horde just as Marc Antony had attacked Octavian on Cleopatra’s field. I saw the Saxon king order his wings to close around Uther, cutting him off from the main body of the British army just as Octavian had cut off Marc Antony.

  I saw Uther fall, his armor hacked through a dozen times, and the war band, howling its battle cries, fight to the last man and die with their chief in the old blood oath. Alexandrian strategy always ends that way, if you’re not Alexander.

  I saw Druids and British captains rally the remnants of their army and charge again and again at the Saxons to recover the king’s body.

  I saw the Saxons set up their cannibal pots in the middle of the battle and begin their human stews.

  Queen Igerne was beside me, her shield stabbed with Saxon arrows. More arrows hissed past
us. I unslung the checkered shield that had hung over my back and held it up to deflect arrows from us both. The hundred and forty-four faces screamed for mercy and terror.

  Igerne’s lifeguards came running at the awful sound of my shield and surrounded queen and merlin with their shield wall.

  Igerne looked down from Badon Hill at the place where the Saxons made ready to eat her king.

  “Most men’s lives are a confusion of self-doubt and indecision. Not his,” she said of Uther. “He knew what he wanted from the moment his mother told him his father stood between him and a dukedom. He was a murderer and a barbarian. Still, he was a king and a king of the Britons. There’s no more wonderful thing than that. But he won’t be the last Pendragon. I won’t have the country given over to Pagans.”

  Igerne slapped her sword on my shield and the faces screamed again. “Merlin,” she cried, “you’re my creature now. I take you from the hands of the dead king. Do you fight with me?”

  “I fight as I always fight – for the king hereafter.”

  “For Gurthrygen!” Igerne shouted.

  Her lifeguards took up the war cry, screaming, “For Gurthrygen!”

  Igerne and her Cornishmen ran down off the hill and into the Saxon horde and I with them, all of us battering and slamming Saxon armor, smashing enemy swords and spears, me swinging Pagan Eater in great slaughtering arcs, Saxon spears shattering on my stone armor, scramasaxes breaking on my stone helmet, arrows piercing the faces of my screaming shield but not piercing me.

  I led the queen cutting an alley through the Saxons. She grabbed up Uther’s severed head and bundled it in her mail skirt. Her lifeguards rummaged through the stew pots to select Uther’s limbs and body pieces. We hacked apart the Pagan priests and made the Sign of the Cross before we hacked apart the Saxon Christian priests. We smashed down Saxon princes and princesses and stabbed out of the eyes of their knights and warlords.

  In our berserker frenzy, we cut our way not back to safety but through to the Saxon king with his startled underkings. We made these princes fight back-to-back beneath their barbaric ensigns, screaming out their gargling war cries and weeping for the wounds queen, merlin, and the Cornishmen gave them.

  Igerne put her greatsword to the Saxon king’s throat to flick off his head but I had in me a merlinic rage to kill the killer of my king. I shoved Igerne aside. I swung my battle ax, driving the blade through the king’s shield and upraised sword, through his breastplate and into the earth between the Saxon king’s boots.

  I drew no blood. I did him no damage. But I saw manic terror in his savage face and that always is the best of all wounds to inflict on an enemy.

  We’ll not kill you today when we must lose this battle, I said to the Saxon king in his soul’s language, but I’ll leave you to Artyr and victory!

  “What does she say? What does she say?” cried the king to his startled minions. “Someone translate this monster!”

  I swung Pagan Eater to cut a way out through the Saxon horde for Igerne and her lifeguards. We fought back to the pavilion. Gurthrygen with his war band was in battle there, the wandering cannibal priests having discovered Arthur, a tasty treat in silver child’s armor.

  Gurthrygen defended his brother with sword and chain. His war band fought with hammers and stakes, nailing writhing Saxons to British soil before nailing out their eyes and livers. I joined them, gleefully hacking and battering in a dreamy frenzy.

  The whole battle seemed fantasy. Uther’s cycle had closed and Uther was in the Underworld sweatily explaining himself to Pluto and Gwynn. I was Upworld killing Pagans with the ease of butchery. Both of us were doing our parts to bring in the age of Arthur.

  The sun reached zenith in a shower of sparks. Both armies sprawled exhausted on the slaughter-field, their fighting given up. Those among the wounded who were able crept away from Morrigu’s darting war ravens and in fear of Morgana’s throat-cutting elves.

  The grassland, hills, and hidden places were heaped with broken armor, forested with driven arrows and spears, strewn with anonymous hands, heads, feet, brains, and livers. It had been a happy and glorious slaughter for everyone, except those for whom this cycle of life had closed.

  Peasants from both armies robbed the dead to make themselves rich enough to buy a few cows. Inferior knights robbed the dead of superior armor to elevate themselves. By afternoon, half the remaining British army was dressed in Saxon armor and half the Saxon army in British armor and there were no cow-less peasants alive on either side.

  Both armies marched away from the field bedraggled and groaning for bruises but thinking it a rich morning’s work.

  I trudged beside the wagon that carried the pieces of the dead king, Uther’s head rolling about until I padded it with his arm and leg.

  Igerne from her horse said to me, “That’s enough sentiment for a rapist and murderer, Old Woman. Come with me to plan Gurthrygen’s election as king.”

  “You don’t need my help. I know Gurthrygen’s story already. He’s his father.”

  “But a more Christian prince, surely, and damn him if he isn’t.” Igerne spat on the ruins of her husband.

  She leaned down from her saddle to say, quietly, “Listen to me, Lady Merlin. When Uther made love to me, every time he made love to me, there always was a third present. You.”

  “Me?” I said, startled.

  “I wouldn’t have the king who killed my love-husband without your breathing on me your love dusts to cloud my mind and give me the dream image that Uther was my loving murdered Gorlois.”

  “You know that?” I said.

  “I didn’t until little Morgause told me.”

  “Six years old and she knows too much,” I said.

  “But do you know this, have you seen it in your backwards life? To despise Uther, I took his first son as my lover, my stepson Gurthrygen.”

  “Great gods!”

  “Then I came to love him. Which is why I’ll make him king. That’s why you’ll help me.”

  “Only for a payment, Queen.”

  “You always want treasure, don’t you? You do nothing out of Christian charity?”

  “I’m a Druid. I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What do you want, Old Thief?”

  “Give me Arthur.”

  “I promised you’d have him in his twelfth year.”

  “That’s too late, Queen. I know the fate of little brothers when an older brother is chosen king. Give Arthur to me now.”

  Igerne was suspicious. “What’ll you make of him?”

  “The man he was born to be.”

  “To rival Gurthrygen?”

  “Never that.”

  “You frighten me, Merlin. I want your oath that Gurthrygen will stay king for life or I’ll fling Arthur to the Saxons.”

  “I can agree to that.”

  “Arthur will never rival Gurthrygen for the crown? That’s what you’re telling me? Swear by all the too many gods, Merlin. Especially your filthy Druid idols, by Beli Mawr or Bendigeidfran or whatever. Swear it!”

  “Agreed and happily. I swear it by any and all gods you want.”

  “Then take the little fool. He’s a disappointment to us all. We need warrior-princes in Britain, not voiceless imbeciles like him. I was going to drown him, anyway, like a cat in a sack.”

  Igerne spurred her horse to the head of the column, pebbles kicked up by its hooves clattering on my stone armor.

  I found Arthur sitting in the back of a wagon loaded with Saxon treasure looted from the battlefield. The field itself had been abandoned to the encroachments of the Saxons. This treasure was all the triumph Igerne could show the population.

  I silenced my complaining shield by covering it with a rag. I dumped shield and stone armor in the wagon. Pagan Eater, too, bloody and chipped as it was and matted with Saxon yellow hair. I kept Urien over my back.

  I sat beside the boy who was flapping his sweaty clothes to air the battle-stink. We dangled our feet over the side.

&n
bsp; I said to Arthur in his soul’s voice, When will you speak to me?

  Do you love me? the boy replied.

  I’m here for love, I said. Will you be my son as your father was my son?

  My father’s dead?

  He’s dead.

  My mother?

  She’s forgotten you. But I never will. I’ve loved you a thousand years, Artyr. You’re my son, my father, and my heart’s king.

  “Be my mother!” said the boy, his first spoken words.

  He wept against my chest.

  We had chosen one another. The golden age was about to begin.

  BOOK II - I CREATE THE KING

  Chapter 1 – Buying Rome

  That night Uther’s broken pieces were exhibited to the people at Londinium, old King Ludd’s capital, and Gurthrygen was lifted on the Pendragon shield and presented to the crowd as the newly elected king of the Britons. Though why they chose a pointless backwater like Londinium, full of beggars and thieves, for the election, I still can’t say.

  Gurthrygen’s election was sped by Igerne’s discreet poisoning and less discreet bribery. More, it was done promptly by the elders to have a berserker king to lead a refreshed army against the next Saxon assault. Let Gurthrygen do that, he was war-clever but expendable. He would buy the elders the time to quarrel and choose among themselves the true ruler of dying Britain.

  The kingdom left to Gurthrygen was just half that of his father. Uther’s kingdom had been half what he had inherited from King Ambrosius, poisoned by the Saxons. Britain now ran from York to Londinium, arched north of Caleva, south along the Cornish border to the Narrow Sea and through Wales to the northern territories and Hadrian’s Wall. It was a pinched country of people who felt pinched.

  But the boy Gurthrygen proved a surprisingly good general and survived his first battle. Complex Alexandrian strategies didn’t interest him. He believed in screaming frontal assaults. He also believed in setting fire to the woods behind his own army to encourage it to attack the enemy frontally.

  Gurthrygen survived his first battle and the battle after that. His victories stunned the Saxon onslaught and equally stunned the electors, each of whom wanted to be king in his place.