by Maples, Kit
At the forest’s edge, with the sight of the Saxon archers drawing bow again, Arthur threw off the last shield pierced by a thousand arrows and raised his middle finger in a Roman salute to the Saxons.
Then he and I, his comrades and his Breton princess, drove our war horses snorting into the trees, all of us howling with fear and excitement, running away.
Chapter 3 – Orkney Castle
We galloped deeper into the forest as Saxon arrows clattered through the upper tree branches, broken leaves fluttering down about us. We had escaped. We were happy and proud.
But, when we climbed trees to take bearings from the land, we saw we had not outrun the enemy. Colgrin’s hordes had merely fired a few thousand arrows to chase us off as an irritation, as a horse tail-flicks a fly.
We watched Colgrin’s vast army pull a dust cloud across the south as though drawing a curtain to seal off Saxon from British territory.
“Great gods,” gasped Lucan. “How do we fight three hundred thousand of them?
“If we put all the fighting men of the Island in one field, we’d have just one-tenth Colgrin’s force,” said Bedivere. “And Colgrin’s is just one Saxon army.”
Guenevere said, “There also are the Scots to fight, and the Picts, Irish, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, King Lot in Orkney who has Mordred…”
Kay whacked his sword in the brush in frustration. “How do we fight all of them?”
Lancelot kicked over sprouted toadstools and cursed the pagan gods of the Saxons.
The Spellcaster and Gwrhyr huddled together miserably cold, trees dripping onto them the wetness from a passing fog.
“Chase off the damp, for Juno’s sake,” Gwrhyr said to Menw.
“This is a Christian land and that’s a Christian fog, you unlettered idiot,” said the Spellcaster. “Who has power over that?”
Then Menw gestured toward Arthur. “But look at him!”
Arthur stared gloomy and desperate into the flames of our campfire.
I looked into the fire to see what Arthur was so hungry to see – Mordred’s child’s face.
Arthur put his hand into the fire to touch the image of his son.
Gwrhyr said to Menw, “Be useful. Give him some Christian cure for his soul’s misery.”
But Menw hissed, “Merlin, look!” He soul-pointed into the trees. “What demon’s that?”
An immense figure rose up in the forest gloom.
The others huddled around us in their chill misery saw nothing.
The creature was a withered giant shrunken and twisted by battle wounds and disease to the seven foot size of an ordinary Saxon. It had a long Saxon face with pendant earlobes, nose, and chin. The tattoos striping its bare chest were inlaid into the flesh with gold and rubies. Its hair was true yellow, not limed, and its eyes were colorless. Its curved fingernails were stained with the blood of its cannibal victims. In its eyes was the flame of manic fury.
The monster spoke Latin in a voice as sweet as a child’s, saying, “Merlin, Merlin, Princess of Mystery, do you know me?”
Only the Spellcaster and Arthur saw the monster with me and heard it speak. My screaming shield heard and was reduced to a mumbling terror.
I hadn’t risen from where I squatted by the fire. I had in my hand a water cup.
“You’re Colgrin,” I said.
For a creature I had never seen in any life and never wanted to see again, Colgrin was unmistakable.
“‘The mighty mythic Colgrin?’” it said in its child’s sweet voice.
“I see you and I know you,” said Arthur.
“I wish I couldn’t see you!” said Menw, cowering.
“See and know this,” Colgrin said. “I am all fire. I am the destroyer of worlds. Spare yourselves the loss of everything you own and love. Join me as my vassal princes. I’ll make you, Arthur, a kinglet powerful beyond anything you can do for yourself on this pathetic little island. You, Merlin, I will make queen of all the world’s magicians.”
“Do you know the Persians?” Arthur said, the horror of facing Colgrin making his voice too loud.
“I had them all read to me before I burned their lying texts and the readers with them.”
“But you’ll remember Cyrus speaking to Pharaoh.”
“Do I?” said Colgrin.
Arthur said, “‘I’d rather be a king in the desert than a slave on the Nile.’”
Colgrin laughed his child’s voice.
“Proof,” he said, “I should have you as my vassal!”
Colgrin said to me, “You join me, too, Lady Merlin.”
“I haven’t in a hundred lives before,” I said. “Why should I now?”
“Because this could be your last cycle before Hell.”
“You can conquer Britain easily enough with your hundreds thousands,” I said. “Why take us for accomplices?”
The monster swept nearer me without walking, its presence driving back the flame of our campfire as though Colgrin himself were a blaze that frightened any ordinary fire.
Colgrin shouted in a child’s petulant voice, “It’s enough for Colgrin to want!”
“Say it out into the air to make it palpable in the world,” Arthur said.
The child voice shouted in fury, “I’m the exterminator of Britain!”
I watched the water in my cup settle after his shout, waiting for Colgrin’s childish fury to calm sufficient for him to hear me.
“This is the third time we ask it, Colgrin,” I said. “According to the rule of three, a third time compels an answer. Why choose us?”
Colgrin shrieked in frustration. “Because Merlin created the World Sword and Arthur will be its master!”
“That thing stuck in the Brutus stone?” said Arthur, startled enough to laugh. “I can’t draw that sword.”
“You’re the only man or woman alive who can,” said Colgrin, struggling to control his tantrum. “I’ve seen it written in the records of Weird.”
“You can read Fate?” I cried.
“I’m Colgrin. I can do anything.”
“Fire and water,” I said. “Did you read that, too?”
I threw the cup water at Colgrin and the demon blazed up and vanished.
He howled in pain loud enough to be heard at last by the others around us at the campfire. They grabbed up swords but there was nothing there to fight. Only the memory of what Colgrin had said hung heavy in the air around us.
Bedivere shouted, “What was that awful cry?”
“Colgrin himself,” Guenevere said. The fright-sweat on her hand let her sword slide out of her grip and clatter among tree roots.
“It’s not Britain he wants,” said Lancelot, as though he had heard some of Colgrin’s speech. “It’s Arthur’s sword.”
“The sword in the stone?” said Percival. “What’s that but a conjurer’s trick?”
“He called it the World Sword,” Arthur said.
Kay said, “Will he conquer Britain and enslave us all to have one sword?”
“Arthur with the World Sword in his hand can defend Britain against three hundred thousand Colgrins,” I said.
“Let’s go to the stone,” Lancelot said. “You try it again, Arthur.”
“Orkney first,” said Arthur. “To rescue my son before Colgrin’s hundred-thousands trample him into the mud. Then I’ll try the damned sword once more.”
Yes! I wanted to shout. To Orkney. To stick my knife into Mordred before Arthur draws Excalibur and Camelot can begin.
I felt a sudden strange confusion in my soul, as though I’d tumbled out of my life’s purpose into a nightmare with no light or warmth and I was lost. I was becoming too much an ordinary woman with too much of the human creature in me, too much heart, and too little of the merlin who must…
But what must I do? Good God, must I do that?
* * *
I led the march north toward Orkney Islands, moving fast, dragging all the others along behind me, hauling the Round Table in its cart, my checked shield nagging me to
march faster. We crossed all of Britain in a day, exhausting work for a merlin weakening toward childhood, but I still had enough magic to do it. I was determined to break quickly my confusion and discover what I had to do to get Arthur to draw the sword.
In my hot anxiety, I saw an image of Mordred full-grown, copper-haired and beautiful as Arthur his father, lounging with his ghittern by a brook singing to a girl named Flavia. The innocent Flavia he murdered and dumped into a merlin’s grave with me.
I shouted in fright, startling the war band, and the image passed.
Now I saw Morgause, queen of Orkney, gazing at me across from where she stood on her castle’s battlements, telling me that, while my merlin’s powers withered, she, living in the normal direction of life, was gathering strength to make herself a witch to exceed a merlin.
I spurred on my horse and splashed across the surface of the sea to Orkney Island, fishing boats fleeing away from me, the war band and the others strung out behind me, terrified to be galloping across water but determined to keep up with Arthur and me.
We raced out of the sea and through a forest and over rain-muddied fields toward the castle set on an outcrop. The sea crashed blue and gray beneath it, causing the castle to shiver. But it had good Roman stone walls with well-placed forts roofed in fire-resistant red tile. The rampart-men were soldiers, not warriors. They studied us with method and care and laughed at our paltry numbers.
The Orkney red raven banner flapped and cracked over King Lot’s palace. With it were the battle standards of princes from Iceland and Norway who had brought him reinforcements.
Around us were the shouts of terrified peasants who ran from their plows and digging sticks to squeeze into the castle. Fishermen hauling their boats out of the sea for safe hiding. Alarm trumpets from the surrounding villages.
I had another waking dream of Morgause.
She came to me on a red horse whose flesh rippled like her own flowing blue silks. She said, “Have you come to kill my son, Lady Merlin? I won’t let you. Not for Arthur, not for ‘Camelot,’ not to save the world. What’s ‘Camelot’ but the diseased imaginings of a merlin who’s barely a merlin anymore? A girl-fraud who claims she’s lived a thousand years backward through time? That’s Greek fantasy! Or a pagan nightmare worth making a cleansing bonfire of your flesh and bones!”
Morgause swept me into the castle. “Look what I see, Merlin,” she said.
She showed me the Scandinavian princes in battle dress, drinking and howling with their war bands, ready to smash Arthur or any other power sent against Orkney. King Lot in his sick bed, still broken and bleeding from our single combat at York, but furious to fight me again. The huddling masses of witches and trolls she had recruited to defend the castle with magic and spirits.
At the castle’s center was a holy oak tree and a triple altar with a triple throne – one each for Lot, Morgause, and Mordred, now nearly four years old.
The boy playing on his throne looked at me with Arthur’s beautiful face and Uther’s startling red hair. He smiled the thin smile I remembered from Prince Mordred when he dumped the slaughtered Flavia in my grave.
I shouted in a bizarre loving horror. Here was the son of my Arthur! Here was the murderer of my Arthur!
The castle trembled at my shout. Warriors screamed out their fright. Lot writhed in his sick bed. Morgause vanished in shattered pieces, like dust floating in sunlight.
Mordred, fading on his throne, stared out at me and commanded Morgause, “Mother, kill Merlin for me now...”
He had Arthur’s voice as a child.
How could I kill this boy?
I wept. I wept with the sound of a howling forest fire, of the crashing fall of ruined battlements, of a sky that grinds everything beneath it to dust and blood.
I saw the Scandinavian princes and princesses with their warriors run down to their longships and put out to sea for home, fleeing my weeping. I saw palace witches and trolls vanish into the Pictish north. Lot’s own war band flee in terror and shame. Servants and slaves run howling away. The terror stampede of horses and cattle. The screeching escape of hawks. The scurry into the deep earth of worms and rats.
The castle was abandoned.
King Lot in his bloody bandages held the red Orkney greatsword in his trembling hands. He said, stunned, horrified, fading away from me, “Holy Jesu, what have you done to me, witch?”
But who did he mean?
* * *
“You’re a merlin yet, Mother!” said Arthur, cheering for me as he, Guenevere, and his war band, hauling the round Table, stampeded through the castle’s open-hanging battle gate into the dusty ward.
The ramparts above us in the ward were empty of guards. No archers in the battle towers. Not even a drunken slave in the stables, or a horse or goat.
“Search the palace!” Arthur shouted to his war band. “Find my son!”
King Lot shoved open the massive door of his palace and came into the ward.
He wore the red raven crest on his ready shield and held his red Orkney greatsword. He was bandaged and staggered from the half-healed wounds I’d given him at York a year before.
“I’m the army and shield of my castle and family, Arthur. I’m the last here with a sword. Fight me if you dare!”
“Arthur, he’s holding a greatsword,” said Lancelot. “None of us has anything to match it.”
“Nothing ‘matches’ this old iron, Dead Man,” said Lot.
He put himself on guard. “Is this motley all my sword has to fight?” he said, enraged. “Then I’ll kill you all!”
Battle-craze came into Lot’s eyes. He clapped on his helmet and smashed the greatsword into Arthur’s shield, splitting metal and wood, throwing Arthur backward off his horse.
Lot shattered Lancelot’s gold war club, smashed off Lucan’s helmet, creased Bedivere’s breastplate and left him on his knees paralyzed and windless.
He used on Kay the back swings from the blows he aimed at Percival, chopping armor and mail off them both.
He waded among the unarmored galley slaves to spatter blood and brains but they fled howling away from him.
He came to Guenevere, her ladies and lifeguards, and shouted, “Is this foreign whore your last defense, Arthur Coward? Then I’ll sheath my sword in her heart!”
Guenevere uncovered a crucifix over her breastplate. “Would you kill Him with me?”
“I’ve tasted battle-blood and I want more!” Lot drove his sword’s point at Guenevere.
Her lifeguards swung their spears to deflect Lot’s blade.
She stabbed her gladius into his armpit through his mail half-sleeve.
Lot screamed his battle cry and ground forward after her, against the restraining spear points of the lifeguards, breaking the spears on his armor, hacking at the lifeguards.
“Hold him for Arthur!” Guenevere shouted to her lifeguards.
Arthur staggered to his feet from his fall off the horse. He threw aside his helmet and took a double-headed battle ax. “King!” he shouted.
Lot turned in his surround of spear points, breaking more as he moved, his helmet broken open, his face streaming sweat, his mail dripping blood from his old York wounds and new blood from Guenevere’s stab. He was too wild to feel pain or weakness. He was blind with berserk.
“Before I cut you out of life, Pendragon,” he roared, “tell me what you’ve come to steal from me!”
“My own son. Give me Mordred.”
“Do you think I’d give up the boy?” Lot cried. “I’ve raised him as my son. Kill me today and he’s King Orkney tomorrow. He’ll have out your liver to burn for its wicked treason against his foster father.”
Lot howled, “I have Orkney in my hands!” and swung the greatsword in an arc around him, breaking the spears holding him in place, cutting a fighting circle for himself and Arthur.
“Now, Arthur Dog, you die!” Lot charged.
Fright-sweating Arthur, with no weapon to break a greatsword or shield strong enough to resis
t it, swung his battle ax anti-sun-wise.
Lot was startled to see the blow coming from the wrong quarter of the sky.
The ax bit through Lot’s mail collar and broke off his head.
It was done.
Stunned silence.
Gasping relief.
We watched the man’s head bounce across the ward.
The eyes of the cut off head sagged shut and the mouth gave out its departing sigh, saying, “Jesu and Don, forgive…”
“This was a prince,” Arthur said, grabbing up the dying head.
We built a Roman funeral pyre in the ward, stripped dead Lot of his arms and armor, wrapped his body in silks Guenevere provided, and laid him on the pyre.
Arthur lit the pyre and the body began to spark and smolder.
“Now find my son,” he said to the war band.
“Sweet Jesu!” Percival cried. “Look!”
Another crest on the Round Table had come clear – the Orkney red raven.
“This is Lot!”
“A dead man can’t sit at my Table,” said Arthur.
“Look at the raven’s crown. It’s King Lot!”
Smoke and flame leaped from the body on the pyre.
“Haul him out of the fire!” Arthur shouted.
“Lay him out the Round Table,” Guenevere said.
The war band lay the huge table in the ward. Arthur pulled the burning corpse from its pyre and threw Lot onto the golden table.
Arthur shouted, “If Annwn will have you, burn, King Orkney! But if Camelot craves you, come out of the Between Worlds!”
Lot, whole, healed, startled, and steaming, stood up naked on the table, the death-clothes burnt from him, his wounds sealed.
Lot slapped his hands on his chest and knees and shouted his victory cry, spitting steam from hair and beard.
Arthur shouted his victory cry and Guenevere hers. We all shouted victory cries.
Arthur said, “Look here, King, I’ve your red raven on my Round Table. You’re Fated to be my man.”
“I’m your companion” – Lot kissed Arthur – “but your loving enemy if you want to take the fosterling from me.”