by Ben Bova
“But—”
He laughed bitterly. “No arguments, Orion. No matter what you do, it hardly matters. I have another assassin ready to kill Arthur, and the jest is that he hasn’t the faintest inkling that he is an assassin.”
“What do you mean?”
But Aten was no longer there. He winked out, like a light suddenly turned off. Like a hologram projection, I thought. Yet his sardonic laughter echoed in my mind.
Could it be true? By protecting Arthur, was I destroying Anya, the goddess I love, the only member of the Creators who showed the slightest concern for the human race?
And someone else was going to murder Arthur? Someone who doesn’t even know that he will kill the Dux Bellorum?
I paced slowly along the crest of the hill as the moon edged lower in the night sky, trying to sort it all out, trying to decide what was true, what my course of action should be. At one point, Aten had seemed almost to be pleading with me. Was he lying? Was he trying to manipulate me, using my love for Anya as a way of controlling me?
The Creators had godlike powers, but they were actually humans from the distant future, humans who had learned to wield the forces of spacetime to travel at will across the continuum. They had interfered in human affairs all through history and even earlier, always trying to bend the worldlines to suit their whims. Aten had created me and others, he claimed, to do his bidding at placetimes where the continuum comes to a focal point, a nexus that would determine the worldlines for eons to come.
Like spoiled children, the Creators often bickered among themselves. Their disagreements brought wars and disasters to humankind, their disputes were settled by our blood.
It was a cosmic irony. These so-called Creators were the descendants of ordinary humans such as Arthur and the men and women of this age. We had created them, in truth. They are our distant progeny. Yet they reached back through time to try to control us.
For hours I walked along that grassy hilltop as the wind from the sea tossed the leafy boughs of the trees and set them to groaning plaintively. The moon went down and I could see the spangled glory of the heavens, stars glittering like jewels, the Great Bear and its smaller brother, the Chained Princess and Perseus the Hero and the majestic stream of the Milky Way. The constellation of Orion was not in sight, though. And Anya was far away, beyond my reach, perhaps forever.
Then different lights caught my eye. Down on the seashore below the hill, fires were burning. Campfires. This was one of the places where the barbarians had built a settlement for themselves. I could see their boats pulled up on the beach, black against the starlit sand. Huts and larger buildings thatched with straw dotted the shore. The barbarians had built a village for themselves, a town for their families and flocks. There were even fields of food crops within easy walking distance of the huts.
The barbarians were not piling into the boats, as Lancelot had predicted. They were nowhere near the boats. They had built this village to live in permanently, and they had no intention of leaving. As I peered down at the starlit scene below me, I saw that they were digging a huge ditch across the old Roman road that led to their settlement.
They were preparing to fight.
3
I woke with a start, back at Arthur’s camp. The first hazy gray hint of dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern sky. Venus hung in the west like a gleaming diamond.
What I had seen during the night had been no dream, I knew. Aten had translated me to the coastal base of the Angles. Why, I did not understand. But it was clear to me that the barbarians had no intention of fleeing Britain. They were digging in, preparing to fight against Arthur’s advancing army.
After I had eaten with the other squires I sought out Arthur. He was sitting under a massive oak tree, alone, looking lost in thought.
“May I speak to you, lord?” I asked.
Arthur smiled boyishly at me and patted the mossy ground. “Sit here, Orion, and don’t be so formal. We are all companions here.”
“It’s about the enemy,” I said, sitting beside him.
“The scouts all report that they are fleeing along the Roman road toward the coast.”
“True enough,” I agreed. “The few survivors from yesterday’s battle are retreating. But their brethren are digging defensive works along that road.”
“Digging?”
“Trenches and earthworks. To stop you.”
He looked puzzled. “How do you know this?”
“I saw it last night.”
His perplexed frown deepened. “But you were here in camp with us last night.”
I thought quickly. “The Lady of the Lake showed it to me.” It wasn’t much of a lie. Anya had appeared to us both in the past; under the guise of the Lady of the Lake she had given Arthur his sword Excalibur.
“She was here?” Arthur gasped. “In this camp?” He looked all around at the forest surrounding our clearing. Even though it was full morning, the woods were deep and shadowy, thick with brush, dark and mysterious enough to imagine all kinds of spirits and supernatural beings lurking nearby, enchantments and wizards and magic spells.
“She took me to the Angles’ settlement on the coast,” I said, trying to skirt my half-truth.
“You saw them digging trenches,” Arthur said, sounding dismayed.
“Yes,” I answered. “They were not loading their boats and preparing to leave.”
He smiled grimly. “Lancelot will be disappointed.”
“I imagine so.”
“On the other hand, Lancelot will probably be glad for another chance for glory.” His smile faded completely.
4
Lancelot was delighted that his prediction had failed to come true. All during our march along the old Roman road he chattered happily about the coming battle.
“We’ll crush them like eggshells,” he said. “The bards will sing of Arthur and his knights for a thousand years.”
He was right about the fame that he and Arthur would win. Poets chronicled the deeds of Arthur and his knights for much more than a mere thousand years, I knew, although the heart of their romances dealt with Lancelot’s falling in love with Arthur’s queen. As we rode along toward the next battle, though, I began to realize that if Aten had his way Arthur would soon be killed and his story snuffed out. No bard would sing of the deeds of a young Dux Bellorum killed in battle before he was old enough to grow a full beard. Arthur would be forgotten, his bones and his legend decayed into dust.
Worse yet, Arthur might be assassinated, murdered by one of his own people. Would Lancelot be Aten’s killer? Certainly I would not. What about crafty old Merlin, still back at Cadbury castle with Ambrosius? The High King had agreed to keep the Saxons along Britain’s southern shores in check while Arthur flung his knights against the Angles and Jutes in the east. Might Ambrosius allow the new Saxon leader to bring his host up behind us, surrounding Arthur’s knights between his Saxons and the Angles and Jutes?
No, I thought, Ambrosius wanted Arthur to succeed. Arthur was now the right arm of the High King; it would be criminally stupid for Ambrosius to work against Arthur.
And yet … the thought nagged at me. Merlin was more than a wizened old faker, I was sure of that. There was an intelligence and purpose in those shaggy-browed eyes of his. I wondered, again, if he might be one of the Creators in disguise. Not Aten, of course. But one of the others, come to this placetime to manipulate this nexus in the continuum.
My mind swirled with the possibilities as we rode along the paving stones of the old Roman road. Straight as a ramrod it ran, through forest thick with huge oaks and yews and elms. To these uneducated Britons the straight, paved roads and solid stone buildings of the Romans seemed like the works of gods. They did not know how to accomplish such engineering feats so they assumed the structures were beyond human capabilities. What foolishness, I thought. The Creators played on that credulity, just as I hoaxed Arthur into believing the Lady of the Lake had transported me to the Angles’ settlement in the night.
The Creators enjoyed being worshipped by their primitive ancestors. If these humans knew what their so-called gods really were, it would make them sick with disgust and shame.
The thick woods on either side of the road made excellent cover for an ambush, I thought. Yet Arthur led his knights along the road without a worry. They rode two or three abreast, each knight dutifully followed by his squire, the whole procession plodding slowly along the paving stones. Our baggage train and footmen followed in the rear.
We had gained dozens more footmen. Those who had been with us in yesterday’s battle now carried swords stripped from the barbarian dead. Some wore helmets and almost all of them had boots or some sort of footgear, probably for the first time in their lives. News of our victory had almost doubled their number. Most of them were Christians, although a few still clung to the older Celtic religion. Christian or not, they talked among themselves of slaughtering the enemy, dreamed of looting the barbarians and raping their women just as the barbarians had done to their own.
We trailed along the road all through the long, hot day. The lofty trees shaded us most of the time. I kept peering into the underbrush, worried about ambush. Dimly I remembered another life, in a distant jungle where every bend in the trail was a danger. I tried to laugh my worries away. At least the enemy doesn’t have land mines and explosive booby traps in this age.
5
Midway through the second day we were halted by an entrenchment. The barbarians had torn up the road and dug a six-foot-deep ditch across it. Beyond the ditch was an earthen mound about six feet high, studded with spearheads. It reminded me of the trench and earthwork rampart that Agamemnon and his Achaeans had thrown up to protect their camp on the shore of Troy. These barbarians had no better military craft than the Greeks and Trojans of some two millennia earlier.
Arthur brought our column to a halt and summoned me with a beckoning hand.
“You said their trench was near their settlement on the coast,” he muttered.
Nodding, I replied, “They were building one there in great haste, my lord. This must be another.”
His youthful face knotted into a frown. “No telling how many such fortifications they’ve built along the road.”
Gawain, at Arthur’s other side, suggested, “We could send scouts through the woods to spy out how many of these ditches they’ve dug.”
“That would take days,” Arthur said. “We’d have to camp here and do nothing while they could slip through the forest and surround us.”
“Let them attack us,” Gawain replied. “It will be easier to kill them in the open than to try to charge against that ditch and wall.”
Bors pushed his horse between Arthur and me. “There’s forage enough here for the mounts. We can wait a day or two. Give the steeds a needed rest.”
Lancelot joined the conference, his face eager. But he was too young to speak his mind in the presence of veterans such as Bors and Gawain. Yet it was clear that he was bursting to have his say.
“I don’t like to wait,” Arthur said. “Every day we sit idle is a day that the barbarians can use to strengthen their defenses.”
“Then let’s charge them!” Lancelot blurted. “One strong charge and we’ll be over their earthen mound before they know what hit them!”
Bors shook his head. “The horses can’t jump that ditch. And they won’t charge those spear points. They’ve got too much sense for that.”
“Then charge them on foot,” Lancelot said, without an instant’s hesitation.
Bors gave him a withering stare. “The horses are smarter than you are, lad.”
Lancelot was totally unfazed. Turning to Arthur, he said, “I will lead a foot charge, my lord, if you will permit it.”
“No,” Arthur replied immediately. Then he added, “Not yet.”
He spent the rest of the day studying the earthwork. We saw barbarian warriors poking their helmeted heads up above the rampart now and then. Once in a while they called to us, taunting us to charge against them. At one point, when Arthur rode slowly along the edge of the trench, a bowman popped up from behind the rampart and fired an arrow at him. I was afoot behind Arthur’s horse, holding a brace of spears for him. My senses instantly went into overdrive. I saw the arrow gliding lazily toward Arthur, flexing slightly as it flew. Hefting one of the spears, I threw it at the arrow, grazing it just enough to deflect it away from Arthur.
It thudded into the ground at the horse’s feet, making the mount rear and whinny in alarm. Arthur held his seat, barely. I imagine if he didn’t have stirrups he would have been thrown. The bowman was still standing atop the parapet, knocking another arrow. I threw the other spear at him with all the force I could muster. As he looked up it caught him in the face. He screamed hideously and disappeared behind the earthwork.
Arthur had his steed under control by then. He stared at me, wide-eyed.
“You…” He glanced at the arrow embedded in the ground at his mount’s hooves and then at the barbarians’ earthen parapet, gauging the distance.
“We should call you Orion Strong-Arm,” Arthur said, clear astonishment in his voice.
I shrugged modestly, trotted to the first spear and picked it up, then followed Arthur back to our camp, safely out of bow range from the barbarian entrenchment.
As the sun dipped westward, throwing long shadows through the forest, Arthur called his most senior knights together at his cook fire. Footmen had scouted through the woods on either side of the road. Their reports were not encouraging. There were hundreds of Angles behind the entrenchment and more coming up the road from the coast.
“We could go around it,” Arthur suggested, “through the forest, and attack them from the flanks.”
Sir Bors pointed out, “Those woods are too thick for horses. We’d have to attack them on foot.”
“Their numbers would overwhelm us,” said Sir Kay, gloomily.
“That young hothead Lancelot wants to charge them straight on,” Bors complained.
“On foot?” Kay looked aghast.
Around and around the discussion went, while the sun set and a deep moonless dark fell over the woods. I heard an owl hoot, and a moaning wind began tossing the leafy branches of the trees. It was easy to understand how these people could believe deep forests such as this to be haunted.
The conference broke up with nothing decided. Arthur walked slowly away from the campfire. I followed him at a respectful distance.
“Orion,” he called to me without turning around.
I came up to his side.
“I must decide, Orion. We must find a way to beat these barbarians. My mission is to drive them out of Britain. We can’t retreat and leave them here unharmed.”
“Then we must fight them,” I said.
“On foot? They’ll slaughter us.”
We were standing in the middle of the paved road, looking up toward the enemy’s position. They had lit big bonfires on either end of their earthwork, so sneaking across the ditch and up the rampart for a surprise attack was out of the question.
“Let me scout their position,” I suggested. “Perhaps I can find a weakness that the footmen overlooked.”
Bleakly, he nodded. Then he murmured, “I wish Merlin were here. He’d know what to do.”
Perhaps, I thought. Or perhaps Merlin would lead you on to your death.
6
I slipped into the woods, armed with nothing but a sword and the dagger that Odysseos had given me at Troy, strapped to my thigh. The underbrush was thick, the going slow and difficult. It would be impossible to sneak up on the barbarians in silence.
Unless … I crouched in the deepest shadows of the bushes and squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to another vantage point. If Aten and his so-called Creators can move across space and time at their whim, why can’t I?
It was useless. No matter how I strained, no matter how hard I concentrated, I did not budge from my spot in the underbrush. If only Anya were near enough to contact, I thoug
ht. She could help me.
“I will help you, my darling Orion,” her silvery voice whispered.
“Anya!”
“I am far away, far distant in time and space,” she told me, her voice so faint I wondered if I were imagining it. “I cannot maintain contact for very long, beloved.”
Just to hear her voice was more joy than I had known in ages.
“Close your eyes, Orion,” she commanded gently. “Close your eyes and see.”
I pressed my eyes shut once again. And suddenly I was high above the forest, looking down as a hawk would, as an eagle soaring among the clouds. I saw the thin straight line of the Roman road, the barbarians’ ditch with Arthur’s camp on one side of it and the enemy’s on the other. Higher and higher I rose. There were three more trenches dug across the road, with several miles’ distance between each one. The final trench was just before the Angles’ village on the coast.
Barbarians they might be, but they understood the value of a defense in depth. Arthur and his knights might fight their way past one of those barriers, perhaps even two of them. But at what cost? How many knights would Arthur have left after two such assaults? How many footmen would remain loyal to him after such bloodlettings?
I opened my eyes and was back in the underbrush.
“Anya, what can I do?” I asked, hardly voicing the words.
There was no answer. Anya was gone. She had given me all the help she could; now the contact between us was broken. Instead I heard in my mind the scornful laughter of Aten, telling me without words that Arthur’s quest to drive the barbarians out of Britain was doomed to dismal failure.
7
But Arthur did not think so. He listened grimly as I described the series of fortifications that the barbarians had dug along the road leading to the Angles’ coastal base. When he asked how I could have seen so much in a single night, I told him that the Lady of the Lake showed it to me. That was not far from the truth.
The two of us walked alone through the deep woods that morning. The rest of Arthur’s army lolled in camp, content to rest for the day. The Angles were not resting, though; they were digging, deepening their entrenchments, strengthening their defenses.