by Jack Whyte
Not everyone who was in the longhouse that day died. Many' fled before the Pendragon attack began, in terror of Merlyn the Sorcerer, whose wicked and unholy infamy as a practitioner of the blackest arts soon spread throughout the entire land of Britain. For even though Carthac had killed Merlyn, beheaded him, and borne the severed head back to his camp, when the head was cast into the fire, flames had erupted thunderously amidst a welter of sparks and breath killing smoke, and from the heart of the inferno Merlyn had emerged, springing whole and alive to slay their champion.
The following day, when the armies of Camulod rode into Carthac's valley, they took prisoners away with them, and those prisoners told everyone who would listen, long afterwards when they had overcome their initial fear they had been witnesses to all of it; they had been present when Merlyn the Sorcerer came back to life.
EIGHTEEN
"Merlyn? Is that you?"
I smiled and turned to see a tall form step between me and one of the flickering torches ringing the interior of the great amphitheatre. The distant shape moved back, then started to approach again, now carrying the torch that had been guttering against the wall. I remained where I was, unmoving, as the ring of his footsteps echoed in the emptiness of the high walled space. Then the voice called out again.
"It must be you, I know, because no one else would ever dare to be here in the very dead of night, at the mercy of my ever vigilant guards. And besides, whenever I see darkness moving inside darkness, I know it can only be my cousin Cay."
Arthur Pendragon looked magnificent, striding forward across the marbled floor. The high crest of his helmet made him appear even taller and more impressive than he was, and his long, heavy cloak swirled behind him. He looked, I thought, almost as magnificent as he had on that morning, nigh on two full years earlier, when he had led his troopers into Carthac's valley and found me, huddling, naked in the longhouse. When last I had seen him, prior to that day, he had been still a boy, large and strong limbed and greatly admirable, aglow with the kind of fairness of face and form that turned women's heads, and men's too, but yet a boy in truth. That morning, when he rode into my life again, the metamorphosis had been achieved, and he approached me as a man—a hardened veteran and a seasoned warrior, Legate Commander, though he came unaware of it, of the Forces of Camulod.
On this night, he bore himself with the easy self assurance of a successful and victorious army commander. It thrilled me to see him wearing the armour of lustrous, shaped and layered, highly polished black bull's hide that had once been mine and before that had been my father's. All three of Us were large men, tall and broad shouldered. The armour, made expressly for my father when he was at the peak of his powers, was studded with solid, beaten silver rosettes; it was the ceremonial armour of a Roman commander of horse from the days of Flavius Stilicho who, as regent of Rome's Empire in the west, had brought the methods and cavalry techniques of Alexander the, Great back into use. Arthur filled it to perfection.
Now, as my young cousin drew close to me, he reached up with his free hand and pulled off the heavy helmet of glazed and toughened leather surmounted by a finger length high crest of stiff horsehair, in alternating tufts of black and white, packed into a beaten silver basket. His face was shining as he flashed his white toothed smile, and he came directly to me, embracing me with the arm that held his helmet while holding the flaming torch well clear. I hugged him briefly, my heart swelling with pride, then pushed him gently away. He cocked his head sideways, humour dancing in his great, yellow, gold flecked eyes.
"What?" he demanded, his voice bantering. "What is it?
You look as though you've been caught doing something of which the good Bishop Enos might not approve." He looked about him then, holding the torch at arm's length above his head, his eyes flicking over and away from the altar that stood close by. "What are you doing here in the sanctuary? I thought that, once the consecration had been made and the altar set in place, only God's servants could come into this area."
I shook my head, forming my features into an expression of rueful regret. "Are you suggesting that I am not one of God's servants, Arthur?"
He was unabashed. "Well, my cousin Cay is, I know that. On the other hand, Merlyn the Sorcerer? That, some might doubt."
I grinned, feeling a scar tug at the left side of my mouth, twisting my smile into a grimace. "Then they would be in error. I am here on Bishop Enos's own business, doing what he would do himself, were he not conferring with his pious brethren. Why are you here?"
"I've been inspecting the guard, keeping them on their toes. It inspires them with joy, and something akin to awe, to know that their Commander never seems to sleep. I learned that from you, you may recall. Have you finished here? Then come and walk with me a while. It's a glorious night."
We walked together back down the way he had come. He replaced the flaming torch in its sconce, then placed his helmet back on his head and nodded to the guard who stood nearby, as rigid as a column of rock. I sensed, rather than saw, the way the man flinched from me without betraying any sign of movement. "I would have expected clouds, had anyone asked me," Arthur suggested. "At least until the day after tomorrow."
Today had been the first of the three days of Eastertide, the day all Christian folk had come to think of as Good Friday, and we had been present at the ceremonies for the remembrance of the Crucifixion of the Christ. Two days hence would see the coming of Easter, and the Resurrection of the Flesh. Belief in that Mystery, I reflected with a rueful, private smile, explained the guard's religious fear of me a moment earlier.
As we emerged through the portals of the large theatre, wending our way through throngs of military personnel, all of whom saluted Arthur, he gestured towards the distant town, where lights illuminated what would, at any other time, have been a black and motionless emptiness.
"Who would have thought that Verulamium would stir to life again, in times like these, eh, Merlyn? What has it been, eighteen years since first you came here and met your Mend Germanus?"
"Yes," I replied. "The years of your own life. My one regret remains that Germanus himself could not be here this Easter." My Mend of years had died in his own bishopric in Gaul the previous year, in the summer following his return from Verulamium in 447. True until death, however, he had set in motion the plans we had prepared for Arthur, and for the survival of the Christian faith in Britain, and had passed on the responsibility for making them come true to Enos, Bishop of Venta Belgarum in the south-eastern country now being called Anglia.
"I believe that," Arthur murmured. "I wish I had met him. He must have been a fascinating man. Warrior and bishop. That's a strange blending."
"Aye, it was, and he was formidable in both aspects. You would have gained from knowing him. He would have liked you."
"How are your feet and legs nowadays?" We had been progressing slowly, Arthur mindful of the limp that prevented me nowadays from keeping pace with him.
I shrugged. "They function. Sometimes they pain me, but less and less frequently. One of these days, I'll have no pain at all." Carthac had maimed me at the moment of his death, when he thrust me away from him, into the firepit. The burns I had sustained had been severe and, when they healed, had left me with shortened tendons in my left knee and heel. My left hand had burned, too, and now its fingers were forever clawed and useless; the leprous area on the web of my left thumb had disappeared at the same time, burned into a knotted mass of hardened scar tissue. Further burns, to my face, had left me sufficiently disfigured for my friend Llewellyn to take great delight in telling me that when he was with me, he knew which of us was the better looking.
Arthur was still staring at me, so I stopped walking and faced him. "What? What is it? I know that look of yours. You have something in your mind you wish either to tell me or to ask me. Which is it?"
As I asked the question, I heard the clattering of approaching hooves, and then a rider drew his horse to a halt and leaped from the saddle to land rigidly at att
ention in front of his Commander, presenting a tightly rolled dispatch in his extended hand. I shook my head in silent wonder at the concentration that could produce this evidence of superhuman discipline. I had spent half my life upon a horse, but I had never been called upon to perform the prodigious feats of horsemanship and personal performance that these young men of Arthur's did without thought.
Arthur walked away to read the dispatch by the light of a nearby torch, and then nodded to the messenger, muttering something that I made no attempt to overhear. It was apparent from his stance that the missive contained no urgent summons, and the man who had brought it was dismissed.
"How do they do that, Arthur? How do they learn to leap down from a horse and land rigid on their feet like that, at attention? I've never seen anything like it in my life, and I've only seen it since you returned last time from Cambria. Is it necessary?"
He laughed. "No, Merlyn, it is not, and I'll grant you it seems... overzealous, but it's a harmless enough thing—a mark of the fever for excellence and distinction that seems to burn in all my men. It's a display of unit pride, no more. It began in the final stages of the Cornwall campaign, when we were cleaning up the detritus of Ironhair's levies. One of my officers, in a great hurry, leaped from his horse like that, to speak to me, and landed upright and rigid. It was sheer luck and completely unintentional, I'm quite sure, but he carried it off and pretended to have done it on purpose. Other young officers were watching, and all were impressed. Within the month, it had become the thing to do, an<} now it's standard. Elite troops develop elitist idiosyncrasies. "
"Aye, " I said, making no attempt to hide the irony in my tone. "I know what you mean. The Praetorians developed some, too. They killed and elected emperors, in their day... " When he did not react to my humour, I began to wonder if the thoughts he was guarding were blacker than I had suspected. "From the lack of concern you showed, I presumed that message you received held no great urgency. Was I wrong?"
He blinked his eyes, then focused them on me more keenly. "Oh, it did. Urgency enough, but there was nothing unexpected in it and there is nothing I can do about it now. It was from Bedwyr. His scouts report that Horsa's Danes are massing again, in the northeast, around Lindum. Bedwyr anticipates that they'll head directly south this time, into our most outlying territories. We've been anticipating something of the kind. Horsa needs to expand his holdings. We threw him out of Cambria and denied him any bases in Cornwall, and there's no room for his people elsewhere along the Saxon Shore, so he has to create new space along its boundaries. That involves intrusion upon us, although he doesn't know yet on whose toes he will be treading. By the time he does. I hope to have my forces well enough bestowed to smash him. He will be far from the sea, this time, with no fleet waiting offshore to spirit him and his defeated Danes away. But that's in the future. It makes no difference to the status quo. "
"Hmm. And you are sure of that? I distrust any analysis of the status quo when great distances are involved. "
'I do, too. But what more am I to do? I can't be everywhere at once, so I must simply wait and be prepared to move, instantly. "
"Very well. " I could not argue with his logic. "Now, what was it you wanted to ask or tell me?"
He laid his right hand on my shoulder. "Come, I'll walk with you to your quarters and ask you as we go. "
When we swung right and headed towards the distant lights of the town, I saw the silent, unobtrusive shadows of the squad of Pendragon bowmen who accompanied Arthur everywhere, as they fanned out and formed a ring about us. He saw me look at them and grinned again.
"My bodyguard. I've tried dismissing them and sending them away, but they are under Big Huw's orders, and it would be more than their lives are worth to obey me and thereby displease him. I'm merely their king; Huw Strongarm is their god. "
I made no comment on that. Arthur had become the king of the Pendragon clans a year before, under the protection and sponsorship of Huw Strongarm, who was now as much Arthur's loyal man as he had ever been Uther's.
"I'm concerned about this matter of the sword, Cay, " Arthur continued, and I immediately put every other thought out of my mind. He seldom called me Cay, and when he did, I knew that he had been thinking long and hard about some problem. I glanced at him, keeping my expression neutral.
"Why should you be concerned? Everything is arranged. "
"I know, but it still worries me. I can't see the sense of it, can't see any advantage to what is so openly a ruse. "
"It's not a ruse, Arthur. It is a symbol, and one of great import. The deed will be symbolic of your cause, Britain's cause. People need symbols to direct their beliefs. We've discussed this before now, several times. "
"We have, but... Merlyn, I'm still not satisfied that the idea will hold water. Look—" He sucked air through his teeth and then let out a pent up sigh. "It's not the symbol that concerns me—not the need for one, at least. I can see that clearly... I suppose it's the physical thing itself that worries me, the sword. I'm to produce my sword out of a stone. But it's my sword, Merlyn, Ambrose's sword! I've been using it for two years now, ever since you gave it to me that day in Cambria. People have seen it. They know it. They know I carry it with me every day, slung at my back, between my shoulders. Why are you so convinced that they will all be so impressed when they see me pull it from a stone? To my mind, they'll be more inclined to laugh. I know I would, were I to see such foolery. "
I had been holding up my hand to silence him for some time, but only now did he pause and look at me. When I was sure that he would say no more, I smiled and nodded.
"I have a question for you, now, and it's one I have never asked you before. Do you trust me, Arthur?"
"What kind of foolish question is that? Whom else could I trust in all the world if not you? Why would you even trouble to ask me?"
"I ask because I want you to engage that trust and bear with me in this. " His face fell, and I continued. "But if you have a single, tiny suspicion in your mind that I might ever do anything that could endanger or belittle you or what I believe to be your God sent cause, then tell me now, and I'll accept it and say no more about the sword. " He shrugged his big shoulders, mute. "Good, then two things more I'll say: I swear to you that no man watching the event will laugh, or will feel aught but awe and wonder. On my oath, I swear that to be true, Arthur. No man, or woman, will think less of you for what you will have done, and none will recognize the sword. You may doubt that, within yourself, but you have my oath on all of it. "
"Hmm. " He was grinning again, his endearing sense of mischief back. "Was that one thing or two you just told me?'
"It was one. The other is... something different in its meaning and structure. " He had caught my hesitation, but held his peace, waiting for me to find the words I sought. Finally I nodded. 'Think of this as a personal wish granting, from you to me. When you have pulled the sword and know that what we did is right and proper and appropriate in every way to what we intend, then I would like you to do something else, for me alone. You may think it strange, but it will cost you nothing. "
"Name it, and it's done. "
I drew a deep breath and released it in a sigh. "When once you hold the sword, Arthur, before the assembled crowd, and are convinced you hold it thus by right, I would like you to strike the blade against the stone—hard—and then reverse it, holding it straight upright in one hand only, with the pommel's end pressed against the stone. As you know, I won't be there, in public view, but I will see you do that and accept it as a signal that your trust in me has been vindicated. Will you do that?"
"Aye, I will, of course I will. " His face was troubled. I knew that he had difficulty with my desire to keep myself away from people's eyes and idle stares, but we had talked of that long before, he and I, and he had accepted my wishes, albeit with reluctance.
"My thanks for that, then, and for not asking why. Now I must find my bed, and you should, too. "
I felt relief, although it was tinged w
ith guilt, for I had extracted his promise fully conscious of a small deceit in this discussion. Arthur thought the sword he was to draw out of the stone on Easter Day would be his own, and so it would, but it would be Excalibur. And so long as he remained in ignorance of its existence until that moment, he would be as stunned by the sight of its magnificence as every other person present that day. In consequence, I had continued to conceal my secret as guardian of the sword for far, far longer than I had dreamed I might.
We walked in silence, then, until the crumbling walls of the town drew near. As we entered the gates and passed the first of the dilapidated buildings, I saw guards in unfamiliar colours standing before its door.
"Who are those people?"
"Cheric's, I think. He's one of the kings from the far north, the district to the east of Derek's lands. But I may be wrong. The kings are gathering, and not all of them have made their presence known to me yet. A full score have arrived since yesterday, each with his own retinue, and there may be more to come. Not all the bishops have arrived, and many of those are travelling with their local kings."
I grunted. "We have a mighty flourishing of kings in Britain nowadays. In my father's time, you would scarce have found a single king in all of Britain—not by that name, at least—save for Uric Pendragon. Has Brander come yet?"
"Aye, he arrived today and is quartered with Connor, Donuil and Shelagh, and ha father, Liam Twistback."
I glanced at him sidelong. "Did he bring Morag with him?
"No, not this time. He came directly from his Isles at Donuil's summons." He smiled. "Brander, at least, is one king I can trust to stand at my back without growing envious."
"He's not from Britain and he is your uncle," I said. "Does it disturb you, then, to have so many kings so close about you?"
Arthur laughed. "So close? No, I prefer them close. That way, I know what they are doing. They are all men, with men's weaknesses. But there are some I enjoy mote than others. We have leaders here, too, from among the Christian Anglians. You knew Cuthric is here, didn't you?" When I nodded, he continued. "And there's one more king whose presence might amuse you: Retorix, the new king of Cornwall."