by Ben Bova
Anya’s advice, I knew.
“Henceforth Arthur will be Dux Bellorum, our battle leader across the length and breadth of Britain.”
The crowd broke into spontaneous applause. Ambrosius let them cheer for a few moments, then raised a hand to silence them.
Looking directly at Arthur, the High King asked, “Nephew, do you accept this responsibility?”
“Gladly, my lord!”
“Then carry the title of Dux Bellorum from this day forward.”
Again the crowd cheered. I could see on Arthur’s face the eager anticipation he was feeling. Yet I knew that as the High King’s Dux Bellorum he had many months of hard fighting ahead of him. Ambrosius had placed himself in a clever position, thanks to Anya and me. With every victory Arthur wins, the High King’s power and prestige will grow. And if Arthur is killed in battle, a threat to Ambrosius’ future is removed.
I looked through the crowd, wondering which of them might be Arthur’s assassin. Would Merlin turn against him? Lancelot? Any of the other knights?
Then I remembered that Morganna—Aphrodite—was waiting in her kingdom in the northlands, planning her revenge against Arthur. And our campaign against the barbarian encampments would lead us northward, just as surely as the sun rose each day.
CHAPTER FIVE
Power and Glory
1
“My God,” breathed Lancelot, “they do look like angels.”
Sir Bors, mounted between Lancelot and Arthur, shifted uneasily in his saddle, making the leather creak. “Never seen angels bearing axes before, have you? Or spears.”
“Or swords, either,” said Arthur.
“They swarm like flies on a dung heap,” Bors growled.
Lancelot laughed. “The more we kill, the more the bards will sing of us.”
I was astride my horse just behind Arthur, ready to ride into battle with him even though I was a mere squire. Arthur’s army was pitifully small compared to the host of Angles who were trudging toward us like a restless golden-haired tide advancing across the flat below. We were hardly a hundred knights with their squires and a few dozen footmen recruited grudgingly from nearby villages.
Arthur had maneuvered his mounted knights to the top of the ridge, pinning the tribe of Angles between us and the bend of the river that glittered in the bright sunshine of this beautiful summer morning. The footmen, farm boys for the most part, stood uneasily behind us, already looking frightened. They would run off at the first sign of trouble, I thought.
“Those look like Roman swords, some of them,” Arthur said, totally focused on the approaching warrior throng.
“They’ve looted this region quite thoroughly,” Bors agreed.
We had seen the consequences of the barbarian invasion of this eastern shore of Britain: burned-out homes, ravaged villages, fields given to the torch, crops ruined. Arthur had camped the night before in the crumbling remains of an old Roman villa. Once it had been the home of a prosperous Celtic landowner, a lord whose family had followed Roman ways even after the legions had left Britain. Now it was abandoned, blackened by fire, gutted by barbarian pillagers, the family who once lived in it nothing but rotting bones that the “angels” had not even bothered to bury.
Ever since the Roman legions had abandoned Britain, the barbarian tribes had been invading the island: Saxons in the south, Angles and Jutes along the east coast, even Scots from the far north had crossed the old wall of Hadrian to devastate the northern kingdoms.
“They’re counting our numbers,” Bors muttered.
Arthur leaned forward slightly to pat the neck of his trembling steed. “Hardly any need for that,” he said, his clear tenor voice firm, unafraid. “They can easily see that they outnumber us ten to one.”
“What matter?” said Lancelot, impatiently. “The more there are of them, the more glory for us!”
Arthur smiled at the young knight, so eager for action that he fairly radiated energy. Battle-scarred Bors shook his head in disapproval.
We all have our dreams. Young Lancelot dreamed of glory. Arthur of victory. Ambrosius of power. Me? My dream was to be reunited with Anya, the goddess whom I love, the eternally beautiful immortal from the far future who loves me.
“My helmet, Orion,” Arthur commanded.
I nudged my horse to his side and handed him the plain steel helmet with the nosepiece that projected down from the brows. I had seen much better helms at Philippi and even at Troy, more than two thousand years earlier. But Arthur disdained fancy plumed helmets and elaborate armor. No, that’s not entirely right. He simply never thought about such things. Dux Bellorum he might be, and a natural leader of the volatile, independent-minded Celts. But there was not a shred of vanity in him. Not much out of his teens, scarcely older than glory-driven Lancelot, Arthur went into battle with nothing to distinguish him from the other knights except the bright red dragon emblazoned on his shield.
He slid the helmet over his sandy brown hair. All along the thin line of chain mail–clad horsemen, the other knights donned their helmets, adjusted the straps on their shields, took lances from their squires. Their steeds snuffled and pawed the ground nervously, sensing that bloodshed was near. Down the grassy slope, the horde of Angles were forming up into a battle line. I saw the golden-haired men hefting spears, staring grimly up at us.
One of the bare-chested warriors stepped out in front of the others, bearing a huge axe in one meaty fist and a thick-shafted spear in the other.
“Come on, you dung-eating cowards!” he shouted. “We will chop you to pieces and feast on your livers! I am Alan Axe-Wielder, son of Alan the Bold, grandson of mighty Hengist himself…”
Lancelot asked, “Hengist was a Saxon, wasn’t he? Not an Angle.”
Smiling from under his steel helmet, Arthur said gently, “They all claim to be descended from Hengist.”
“With a bit of luck,” muttered Sir Bors, “the Axe-Wielder will be sitting in hell with old Hengist before the sun goes down.”
The barbarian leader ranted for a long time, working himself and his men into battle fury, boasting of their victories and invincibility, demeaning the prowess and even the masculinity of the Celtic knights.
When at last he drew a long breath, Bors bellowed, “Fools! You face Arthur and his knights, not some poor unarmed farmers and defenseless women. Prepare your souls to meet their maker!”
With that Arthur lifted his lance in his right arm and sang out a single word: “Charge!”
A hundred lances snapped down to point straight at the enemy. A hundred powerful steeds sprang into the gallop, with me and the rest of the squires close behind. Down the grassy slope we thundered like a spearhead of steel hurtling toward the vast surging sea of waiting barbarians.
Small though our numbers, we had an advantage the barbarians did not suspect: the stirrups and spurs that allowed the knights to charge into battle at full tilt and smash into the enemy without slowing down. These Angles had a lethal surprise ahead of them.
They were brave men, though. As we hurtled downslope toward them they gave ground slowly, instinctively backing away from our onrushing horses. But only a few grudging steps. Then they raised their weapons and stood their ground, waiting until we surged into their midst so they could surround us, swarm over us, bring down horse and rider, and hack us to pieces.
It was not to be.
Leaning close to his horse’s mane, his weight on his stirrups, his spear pointed straight at the boastful Alan Axe-Wielder, Arthur led the charge into the host of Angles. I raced behind him, sword in hand, to protect his back. The world seemed to shift into slow motion, time itself stretched so that everything around me appeared to move in sluggish, dreamlike lethargy. I saw the horses pounding down the grassy slope as if they were drifting through a soup of thick, clear molasses, clods of earth thrown up by their hooves floating languorously through the air.
The charging knights took on a wedge-shaped formation, Arthur at its apex, Lancelot and Bors at his sides. T
hey struck the barbarians at full gallop. Arthur’s lance took the Axe-Wielder full in the chest, shattering his shield, lifting him completely off his feet. He looked terribly surprised as his rib cage caved in and his life’s blood spurted out of him.
Wrenching his lance free without slowing down a fraction, Arthur drove his steed through the shocked barbarian line, bowling over warriors too slow to get out of his way. Following close behind him, I hacked left and right at any man foolhardy enough to try to get at Arthur from behind.
The knights had blasted right through the heart of the barbarian formation. Where the Axe-Wielder and his best men had stood a moment ago, there was now no man standing, nothing but shattered bodies littering the blood-soaked grass. The two wings of the barbarian host stood in shocked disbelief, separated, stunned, too amazed to either charge or run away.
Arthur wheeled his mounted knights to the left and we charged into that crowd of milling, dazed warriors. In truth, they seemed petrified, disorganized, the heart torn out of them.
Yet they stood and fought, though little good it did them. The knights smashed into them, a hurtling wave of steel dealing death with lance and sword. Before the stunned, disheartened warriors on the other side of the field could make up their minds to rush at the mounted knights, their brethren were smashed, disemboweled, scattered like dandelion seeds in a gale. Those that still could ran, dropping shields and spears and racing away as fast as their legs could carry them, howling with terror, splashing into the river, tripping, falling, floundering in the cold water, mad to escape onrushing death.
Lancelot drove after them, his sword licking the lives from the fleeing warriors. No, they were no longer warriors; they were terrified men trying to run away, desperate to save their lives.
With a sudden roar, our footmen came running down the ridge, armed with swords, sickles, clubs, knives. The river began to run red as they hurled themselves, bellowing with pent-up fury, on the men who had looted their homes, killing and raping and burning.
“Come back!” Arthur shouted after Lancelot. “Regroup!”
But Lancelot was chasing down the hapless barbarians, his steed splashing into the river alongside the vengeance-maddened footmen. Arthur wheeled his knights around to face the remaining barbarian warriors who were starting a ragged charge on foot toward us.
“Get back here!” bellowed Sir Bors, in a voice that could be heard across eternity.
Lancelot reined in his horse, turned around, and cantered back toward Arthur. His squire trotted to him and handed him a fresh lance. The belly of Lancelot’s horse was red with barbarian blood; the knight’s legs were spattered with blood up to his thighs. Even the golden eagle emblem on his shield was barely visible, covered with blood and dripping mud.
Once Arthur got his formation turned to face the remainder of the once-boastful Angles, the onrushing warriors slowed and then stopped altogether. From my vantage point slightly behind Arthur I could see the consternation and fear on their faces. For a long moment they simply stood there, mouths open in shocked disbelief, eyes staring wildly. Arthur and his knights sat on their snorting, blowing mounts. Neither side moved, except for a few of the barbarians in the rear of their undisciplined mass, who slowly, silently backed away and then began to slink toward the river and the thick woods beyond.
Lancelot trotted up and, without stopping, spurred his horse into a charge.
“Wait!” shouted Arthur. But Lancelot was already galloping at the barbarians.
In truth, their host was no longer an army, it was a cowed, beaten mob. They were melting away; one by one at first, then by the twos and threes, by the fives and tens, they fled for their lives as Lancelot charged at them, alone. Yet there were still dozens of armed warriors standing their ground, many scores of men who were not running away.
“Damned fool!” Bors groused. “One man alone, they’ll swarm all over him.”
Arthur looked grim, watching Lancelot’s solitary charge. The other knights seemed just as stunned as the barbarians; they all turned to Arthur for his command. Drawing Excalibur from its sheath, he shouted, “Charge!” once more.
Again we thundered into action. Seeing us all galloping after Lancelot, the remaining barbarians lost what was left of their nerve. They bolted and ran, scattering everywhere like mice trying to flee a hungry cat. Little good it did them. We caught them at the river’s edge and slaughtered them. Blood and bones and severed arms, heads, bodies split from shoulder to crotch littered the grass and turned the river into a charnel stream.
At last Arthur shouted, “Enough! Enough!”
Lancelot was in the river again, up to his horse’s belly, hacking away at any man left standing. Arthur had to splash in alongside him and grip his sword arm.
“I said enough,” Arthur repeated.
For a long moment Lancelot simply stared at his commander. Then he sheathed his reddened sword and swept off his helmet. He was grinning, white teeth showing, eyes asparkle.
There were no barbarians left standing. The few who had escaped were fleeing into the woods on the other side of the river. Our footmen, ferocious in victory, were merrily slitting the throats of the wounded and picking their carcasses clean of weapons, helmets, boots, even their leather trousers.
“The crows will feast ’til they burst,” said Bors, surveying the bloody scene.
“A great victory!” Lancelot shouted as he and Arthur rode side by side out of the river. “A wonderful victory! The barbarians will run all the way back to their own country, over the sea!”
Arthur was more thoughtful. “You mustn’t go dashing off on your own. You could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t!”
Bors interjected, “Only because we came up behind you, lad. You’ve got to keep your head in battle—or lose it.”
Lancelot laughed and trotted away.
“He’s going to be trouble,” Bors said to Arthur.
Without taking his eyes from Lancelot’s retreating back, Arthur said softly, “He’s young. He’ll learn better.”
“Or he won’t get much older,” groused Sir Bors.
2
That night we camped in a clearing in the forest across the river, upwind from the battlefield. Arthur sent a dozen mounted scouts to find where the remnants of the barbarian army had fled.
“Their main camps are close by the coast,” he told us, over the dying embers of the campfire. “Their warriors must have headed that way.”
“Probably along the old Roman road,” said Gawain. “It’s the straightest route to the coast.” Gawain was one of the few knights who’d been wounded in the fight. His thigh had been sliced slightly by a spear. Laughingly, he claimed he’d taken the spear thrust to protect his horse.
Lancelot was still glowing with excitement. “Right now, the few barbarian survivors are probably telling their fellows how we crushed them. By tomorrow they’ll be climbing into their boats and leaving Britain forever.”
Arthur smiled tiredly at the young knight. “I wish it would be so,” he said.
It was not.
I stretched out on my blanket, close to Arthur, my sword at my side, and closed my eyes to sleep.
Instead, I found myself standing on a windswept hilltop bathed in the cold silver glow of a gibbous moon.
Anya, I thought, my pulse racing. She’s come to meet me here.
“Not your precious Anya,” said the haughty voice I knew only too well. I turned and saw Aten stepping out of the shadows of the sighing, wind-tossed trees.
He styles himself the Golden One and, truly, he is magnificent to look upon. Even in this moonlit night he radiated light and strength. Golden hair, tawny eyes, the body of a Greek god, Aten was dressed in a military uniform of purest white, with gold epaulets and trim.
“You continue in your pitiful efforts to thwart me, Orion,” he said, a contemptuous smile on his lips that was half a sneer.
“I protect Arthur as best I can,” I replied.
With a condes
cending shake of his head, Aten went on, “How little you understand the forces you are dealing with. But then, how could you understand? I did not build such knowledge into you.”
“Teach me, then. You claim to be my Creator: educate your creature.”
He laughed in my face. “Teach you? Can a mule be taught spacetime mechanics? Can a flatworm learn how to manipulate the continuum?”
I said nothing. I longed to smash in his smug, gloating face, but I was powerless to move against him.
“The game grows more interesting, Orion, but it can end in only one way. Arthur and his Celts must be defeated by the invaders. That is what must be.”
“Because you want it that way.”
“Yes! That is my desire. I will not allow you or anyone else to stand against me.”
“Others of the Creators do not agree with you,” I pointed out.
“That is none of your affair,” he snapped.
“Anya is against you.”
He bristled. “Anya is far from here, Orion, devoting her misguided energies to another aspect of the continuum, another nexus that must be resolved properly.”
“Another part of your game.”
“It is hardly a game,” Aten said sharply. “Because of you and your oafish stubbornness, this nexus here in Britain is in danger of unraveling. If it does, the entire continuum will be shaken to its foundations, whole worldlines will crumble—”
“And you will lose your power,” I interrupted. One glance at his face, though, told me what he dared not say. “You will lose your existence!” I realized.
“So will Anya,” he answered. “So will all we Creators be banished from existence. The Earth, the human race, everything will disappear totally and forever, wiped clean from the continuum as if we had never existed in the first place.”
I stared at him. Then I heard myself say, “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe, Orion,” Aten replied, totally serious. “You claim to love Anya. If you continue to protect Arthur you will be killing her, just as if you drove your dagger through her heart.”