by Maples, Kit
The armies collided with the huge shouted crash of a hundred thousand fighters running into each other breastplate to breastplate, the impact so tremendous that men and women and horses were flung into the air, the lead ranks plowed under by the following ranks, and the armies attacked each other uphill over the writhing bodies of their own half-dead comrades.
“Horst!” Arthur shouted.
“Lord Duke,” I shouted, “come face King Arthur!”
Morgengrabe! sang Excalibur.
There was Horst mounted on a gilt horse among his battle captains with his blue battle flags and his carts of slaves and treasure plundered from a score of British towns and villas.
He had a gilt helmet pushed back on his head, his yellow braids knitted with gold ribbons, and his breastplate and shield were gold-inlaid. He and his horse was yellow and immense. He gleamed hot in the rays of the afternoon sun as though he were himself a second sun put down on Earth to scorch Britain and incinerate its king.
“I am what you see, Arthur King!” he said. “The burner of your world!”
Horst spat at Arthur.
“I have here” – he hauled up an immense battle ax – “the tool that gives me the crown you have on your helmet. This,” he said, weighing the battle ax in both hands, “is The Morgengrabe.”
The ax said, Morgengrabe!
Excalibur! said the World Sword.
Horst, in battle-frenzy, slapped shut his gilt helmet and shouted to his captains, “Let one army slaughter and the other be slaughtered! None of it matters. The real battle, my captains, is here!”
Horst swung the battle ax and chopped off the head of Arthur’s war horse.
Llamrei stood, headless and loyal, until Arthur had leaped with sword, spears, and the shield Pridwen onto the ground. Then the horse collapsed.
Horst swung the ax again and beheaded my horse. The animal fell without waiting, me in my armor crashing onto the mailed feet of Horst’s captains.
Horst, to even the combat, sheared off the head of his own golden horse and slid down its spine as the dead animal reared and fell over.
“Now, Little King and Merlin Fraud,” Horst said, advancing on Arthur hauling me to my feet, “you both die!”
The Saxon captains swarmed behind their duke, stabbing at us with their spears, throwing clubs and stones, slashing at us with scramasaxes.
We shielded off all these petty blows in a racketing of metal and stone on shields, my shield screaming in agony and Pridwen’s eagle, battered and torn, glinting a Saxon god’s forbidding eye at the frightened Saxon captains.
Horst swung The Morgengrabe and shattered the unbreakable Pridwen, flinging Arthur to sprawl in the dust. Before Horst could backswing on Arthur, I drove the Brittany greatsword shattering through his breastplate and shoved him sprawling back on his captains’ spear points. He howled and the captains screamed in terror.
This greater uproar in the midst of the uproar of battle attracted the Saxon horde. It turned in on itself to bite at the two of us.
That turning attracted the Round Tablers – Bedivere, Kay, Percival, Lucan, and blind Dubric with Lancelot. They swarmed into the center of the fight within a fight, drawing their divisions with them. They threw off the in-turning Saxon centuries. They stabbed the captains shoving their duke in his shattered breastplate and The Morgengrabe toward Arthur.
Until it was Lancelot who stood alone between Horst with Morgengrabe and staggering, shield-less Arthur.
“Duke!” Lancelot said to Horst. “Know me – Lancelot son of Vivien, Lady of the Lake and witch-princess of the Franks. I’m the blood of Clovis – his throne is to be mine. Kill me and you kill a proto-king and create eternal war with the Franks.”
Lancelot wiped battle mire from his priestly war club and said, “Say, Duke, what you will do.”
“This, Lancelot Son of the Witch!”
Horst raised his battle ax over his head and brought it down, shattering through Lancelot’s shield, splitting his helmet, cracking open Lancelot’s breastplate as a turtle’s shell is split for cooking.
Lancelot stood looking down at his split body. He raised his war club and in doing that pulled himself apart. His two pieces fell to either side of Horst.
“Feed my Morgengrabe another puny Round Tabler!” Horst roared.
“Try me, Duke,” Bedivere said. “My old gristle is tougher to cut.”
“Come, One Arm,” Horst said, “let me balance you up!”
Horst hacked off Bedivere’s sword arm before Bedivere could raise his blade. He cut off the stub of Bedivere’s lost arm and with it Bedivere’s shield. He cut off Bedivere’s legs and then cut off his head before Bedivere could fall into the muck and blood that had been Lancelot.
“Feed The Morgengrabe again!” Horst roared above the howl and screech of battle.
Percival and Kay came at him together, one slashing low, the other high. Horst shouted his surprise and used the huge ax in a forward and backward motion that no other axman was strong enough to manage.
He cut apart Percival and Kay, emptying out their lungs and hearts. He laughed, grinding their livers with the last of their thoughts beneath his boot.
Horst leered down at Arthur and me from his huge height and said, “Come, Boy King and Druid Girl, feed The Morgengrabe another of these sorry Round Table knights. Raise my taste for blood – make me hungrier to kill you two!”
Lucan was there in his black armor and mire-covered shield. “Try me next, Saxon!”
“Easily!” Horst swung down the ax. It clattered across Lucan’s bloody shield and drove itself into the mud.
Horst shouted in surprised frustration. He attacked again, swinging, thrusting with the ax, parrying Lucan’s sword, feinting to turn aside Lucan’s shield.
Lucan pricked Horst with his sword point, knicked him through his armor, cut off a boot toe. That’s all he could do around the swinging Morgengrabe.
The Morgengrabe shattered Lucan’s black sword.
Lucan leaped inside the ax’s swing to drive a splinter of sword past the cheek guards into Horst’s face. The giant screamed in pain and rage.
Horst drove on in fury, swinging The Morgengrabe to slip-slide across Lucan’s shield. Sunlight sparked through the shield’s mire covering. Horst reached out to rub away the bloody muck.
“Great Thor, the shield is glass!” he cried. “I cooked your father’s heart in my stew pot on the ramparts of York. He had no shield like this or I would’ve taken it! What glass stands against The Morgengrabe?”
“This kind,” said Lucan, wiping from the shield more battle mire.
There in the clear glass was a prophecy in the moving image of a king full of love and honor in his peaceful country preserved by a round table of knights.
I’d never before seen that image on the shield. It had come there out of the shield’s own power.
“That’s Camelot!” Horst shrieked in rage, swinging The Morgengrabe across the top of the glass, using the shield as a boy will use a pond off which to skip a stone.
The ax skipped off the shield’s rim and went through Lucan’s neck and flicked off his head.
Lucan’s body jerked backwards, throwing the shield toward Arthur.
Arthur shook off the ruins of Pridwen and hauled on the glass shield.
No longer was the glass an image of a peaceable kingdom. Now it was the image of Thor’s eagle, spitting and flashing, of Camelot driven to war.
Arthur, behind the glass shield, Excalibur in his hand, swung in to attack Horst.
I was there beside him with the Brittany greatsword.
The Saxon captains huddled behind their duke fell back, howling pagan prayers, crossing themselves in poor imitation of their Christian victims at the stew pots.
“Victory to Thor!” Horst shrieked, driving The Morgengrabe full force into Thor’s eagle on the glass shield.
The impact did not break the glass but drove Arthur to his knees, struggling in the mud and blood to jump up for a counterat
tack.
Horst lifted The Morgengrabe for the killing blow. But the fright of smashing the battle ax once more into Thor’s eagle on the glass shield made him stagger.
I drove Guenevere’s greatsword through Horst’s shattered breastplate and through his bone cage and shoved out his white spine.
But the giant did not die.
He shrieked in pain and swung the ax sideways at me. The flat of it crushed my armor and flung me into the muck.
He raised The Morgengrabe again.
“Can’t this man die?” I shouted, my greatsword stuck through his chest.
My shield cried, “Save us, Arthur!” and “Use us, Merlin!”
I hauled up the checkered shield and huddled beneath it.
The shield screamed in horror as The Morgengrabe bit into it, smashing faces, spewing shield-blood, calling out the piteous wails of the wounded merlin faces and the frenzied hate of the battle-hungry faces.
“Arthur!” I cried.
Arthur still on his knees in the sucking blood-mud swung Excalibur in a hurried upward blow, cutting through Horst’s armor and helmet, sending their pieces whipping out over the top of the battle, and throwing Horst off his attack on me.
I staggered upright, blood dripping from my shield, the faces screaming for vengeance, spitting and spewing. The Saxon captains in their terror attacked the faces individually but I cut away the Saxons with the Brittany greatsword I dragged out of Horst.
I drove the captains back, back, back into the cutting blades of the British army and the last of the Round Table, of Rufus, King Lot, and blind Dubric with his last sons leading him through the fight.
Dying Horst turned himself toward Arthur again, the giant moving with the deliberation of a grist stone. Panting for breath, sweat running from his face, his braids thick with other men’s blood. His armor was shattered and hung from him in bits. His chest was bared and gushing blood from my sword’s plunge into him.
Horst sucked in air, let out more blood, and raised The Morgengrabe.
“Arthur!” he roared. “Welcome to Hell!”
Arthur threw aside the glass shield and took Excalibur in a two-handed grip.
Morgengrabe! said the battle ax.
Excalibur! said the sword.
The ax blade and sword blade crashed together driving a shiver running across the field of battle like an earthquake. Warriors who were stabbing swords into other warriors and warriors who were being stabbed stopped, suspended in their living and dying.
The Morgengrabe cracked, its metal pieces falling on either side of Arthur as Lancelot’s pieces had fallen on either side of Horst. The pieces fell into the mud as cold and dead as unsouled metal.
“Thor! Traitor!” Horst shrieked at the sky.
Excalibur snapped off the Saxon’s head, braids bobbing, and flung the head arcing out over the battle.
Horst’s head in its dying whisper said, “Colgrin follows me as my revenge…”
* * *
The Saxon army dissolved like a foul mist vanishing in clean morning sunshine.
British cavalry broke cheering from the army to spear Saxons fleeing eastward across the horizon, the Saxons howling, “Colgrin! Save us!”
The British infantry continued its stolid slaughter in merry manner, tramping forward over the enemy corpses it had just made to fall on the last hard nubs of Saxon resistance and crush them out with shouts of delight.
Steaming King Lot shoved his way barehanded through the turmoil, his armor and weapons shattered and lost, mud and blood on his face, clearing a path for Guenevere and Arthur’s sons and the Round Table carried by the last surviving knights of the war band.
Lot wept gazing at the Morgengrabe-cut pieces of Lancelot, Bedivere, Kay, Percival, and Lucan and said, “These were the best of the Britons. Is this the end of Camelot?”
I wiped battle mire from the Table. The insignias of Lancelot, Bedivere, Kay, Percival, and Lucan had shrunk into unreadable haze.
“They’re lost to Camelot,” I said.
I could not remember if this was what was to happen in the future but it had happened.
Evening!
I was startled to see it come so soon, the blackness rising out of the west to color the eastern sky. That seemed wrong, too. Where was the usual source of evening?
“Are we between-times, Lady Merlin?” said Guenevere, unfrightened by the wrong evening sky.
“We are,” I said.
She drew her gladius. “Then anything can happen, my Druid Princess, can’t it?”
“It can, Queen.”
She took her shield from the two infants who held it for her, from Mordred and Gawain, and said, “Then let it come to me.”
She faced west toward the gathering gloom, Arthur’s frightened children huddled behind her.
Arthur said to me, “Clear the dead.”
Dead layered the Earth like wilted weeds. I swept them into a mountain pile.
“Make the funeral fire,” Arthur said to Lot.
Lot made flame with a touch of his steaming hand. The mountain of dead flashed all over fire and became dust on the cold wind blowing out of the west.
“Lay the Round Table for a victory feast,” Arthur said to Hadrian the Lesser.
Hadrian piled up meat and fish.
“Give them beer,” Arthur said.
“For Britons?” said Hadrian.
“For whoever feasts at my Table after.”
After what, Pendragon? I said, and so did the spirits of all the dead around us.
“After this!” said Arthur.
He pointed west into the unnatural darkening of the sky, where a sun that was not golden but black sank away into the Western Ocean.
But it was not the onslaught of night that shadowed the day.
Colgrin’s arrowstorm blackened the sky from the horizon, his machine-flung spears and stones, his slung Greek fire, all of it making the sky like the inside of a coffin lid streaked by unearthly lightning.
Colgrin’s three hundred thousand came running below the night they had created.
Arthur’s army, victorious but spent, battle-bruised, unfed, unwatered, armor broken and spears shattered, swords knicked, shields cracked, looked west and groaned a sound that sent a shiver through the arrowflight driving down on them.
Then they made no more sound as the first arrows drove into them, pinning them writhing on the Earth, holding them for the second and third and fourth flights to rivet them over and over to the ground, men and women, horses and wagons, only the Round Table deflecting the arrowfall and making a space for Arthur, Guenevere, and the last of the knights to sit at their own funeral meal Arthur had made for them, waiting with me for the end of the world.
“Here comes all the evil of the world,” said Lot, watching the in-swarming cannibal horde.
“Oh, my sons!” Guenevere cried.
Hadrian the Lesser wiped clean his battle ax and said, “I forgive you, Arthur, for murdering me.”
The arrowstorm shattered down on Hadrian and he was smashed.
I threw up my battered shield, its faces raging in fright, and deflected the arrowstorm from Guenevere and the two princes.
“Have you forgotten Mordred?” said the queen.
“I’ve forgotten everything and I’m happy for it,” I said, feeling in my veins and heart the surge of one last battle-lust innocent of anything but fighting for Camelot.
Arthur kissed Guenevere and his children.
He slung Lucan’s glass shield across his back to shield off the arrowfall. He kneeled before me. “Mother Merlin, bless me one last time.”
I now was much younger than Arthur but I cried, in the voice of the old woman who first cuddled a lost, frightened boy on the back of an ox cart, “My son!”
Arthur rose and drew Excalibur from its fleece.
Camelot! said the sword.
“Brothers and Sisters!” Arthur shouted across the battlefield to his knights and warriors living and dead.
“Ar
thur!” they shouted back, the battered living spitting out blood and the dead healing themselves.
“Join me in one more fight and live forever!”
Knights and army cheered.
Arthur swung Excalibur toward the west, glittering and hissing, the steel driving into the Saxon horde to seek and cut out its lord.
I hauled out the Brittany greatsword and grabbed up the screaming shield.
Three hundred thousand Saxons ran toward us beneath their arrowstorm, cheering for victory.
Out of the Saxon horde, towering like the smoke of all burning Britain, roiled the image of Colgrin.
Arthur and I shouted, “Colgrin! We welcome you to Hell!”
We ran forward into the night and into the enemy horde.
EPILOGUE – Omega and Alpha
After the end of the world, a child woke beneath the last down-whistling swarms of Saxon arrows and the diving howls of the war ravens.
Around her in the night, barely seeable, were tripping heaps of metal and bone slippery with slaughtered flesh. Her trembling hand gripped the Earth and the blood on it, clutching the souls of the dead who, at this place, had shouted grim “Peace!” as their hearts and throats were cut in defense of Arthur and Camelot.
The blood whispered to her, “Hail, Lady Merlin! Make us live again to fight again!”
“‘Merlin?’” the child said, feeling her girl’s cheeks and her body naked of the battle-armor stripped from her in the fighting.
Was she still the Druid of legend, the one-hundred-forty-fifth of her kind, the Greatest Merlin? Or was she nothing at all, merely a dead spirit stumbling around Earth until the Lord Pluto found her to pluck away to Hades or Hell or both?
She heard across the night with its reek of blood and the choking cries of the dying the wail of Roman flutes.
“Arthur!” she cried.
Night parted, showing Morrigu’s cackling ravens pecking out the eyes of the half-dead. Showing Saxon women robbing the dead and the undead.
The girl stumbled to the muddy shore of the River Cam. She saw a great oar-less galley hung with black silk, with torches like comets, with a funeral bed laid on the Round Table.
There lay young Arthur, stripped of mail and the Pendragon helmet, holding a silver crucifix. The witch-princess Vivien of the Lake stood over him. Guenevere with the glass shield and Mordred and Gawain huddled beside the bier, weeping.