Balin sat awestruck at the selfless gesture for a moment and entertained thoughts of doing as the forceful commander ordered. But then he spied Arthur turning and slashing with his sword on Hengroen in the center of the river, and shook off the King With A Hundred Knight’s authoritative spell. Balin plunged toward his true sovereign and master.
His heart matched the pounding of the great horse’s hooves on the ground beneath him, and he drew his sword for the first time in life and death.
His horse broke the surface of the water, and he was in the thick of the fight then, steel ringing all around him. He passed half a dozen combatants before he finally, shakily, drew back his sword and struck a black helm, the shock of his first killing blow vibrating up his arm to his shoulder. He imagined that in the spray of blood from beneath the enemy helmet, the soul of its wearer wheeled and passed like a puff of cold air through his own heart.
Balin felt a moment’s ache, a moment’s regret. Then he gave himself over to war.
Striking as he had trained his whole life, every thrust at the soft points between the dark steel plates of harness drew blood, every slash of sword and heave of his shield battered a man from his saddle. Men screamed beneath the feet of his horse and disappeared beneath the shallow water.
Then he was near Arthur. The boy king accounted for himself gamely, felling man after man, and never left Hengroen’s back, St. Michael beating back the devilish hordes of rebel angels, untouchable. Unassailable. The noon sun cast a corona about his naked head, as though beatifying him. Balin half-expected to see the clouds part and to hear the booming voice of God Himself declare Arthur His son in whom It was well pleased as He had Christ at the River Jordan. Balin feared the stray cut or blow that might bloody that handsome crown, but Arthur fought as though he feared nothing at all.
Balin did not know how long they fought, but as suddenly as it had begun, the clash ended. He had skewered a black knight through the visor of his helmet with his sword and turned to meet the next only to face a riderless black horse wading past him for the bank.
The river ran red with blood and slow turning bodies. Bits of black steel jutted out of the water like stones. Many of Arthur’s men lay too.
“God,” said Arthur nearby, gasping, wiping the blood from his eyes with the back of his mailed hand. “I’ve never fought better men.”
Balin could not argue that.
“Are you unhurt, my king?”
“Sir Balin!” Arthur said in surprise, straightening in his saddle. “Where are Sir Bedivere and the woodcutters?”
“In Aneblayse, by now,” said Balin.
“Good. But why are you here?”
“You don’t understand, sire. Aneblayse is occupied by the rebels. We met King Carados and King Uriens on the road. The woodcutter…”
But Arthur had turned away and was shouting.
“Kay! Kay!”
His stepbrother came plodding over. He was soaking wet and had lost his horse. His armor was dented, but when he raised his visor, he looked unhurt.
“It was foolish to charge in like that, Arthur,” Kay admonished.
“Spread the word,” said Arthur, ignoring him. “We ride double time to Aneblayse. I want to be there by nightfall.”
“Ah,” said Kay, closing his eyes and smiling. “Soft beds.”
“No,” said Arthur. “Not yet. The rebels are there.”
“We can’t fight them in the dark!” Kay protested. “We’re outnumbered!”
“The night will be our ally.”
“The night can’t hold a sword, or break a charge,” Kay argued.
“The night won’t have to,” Arthur smiled. “Spread the word. Devils bite your hide, Kay, hurry now!”
Balin looked around. He did not see Aguysans among the dead, nor Morganore. He said so.
“Good,” said Arthur, urging Hengroen for the west bank. “I’m glad. I would not want to be known as the man who ended The King With A Hundred Knights.”
“But, they are your enemies, sire,” Balin reasoned.
Arthur rested in the saddle for a moment, then reached down and dipped the bloody sword of Macsen in the river, to clean it.
“The High King isn’t meant to be a conqueror, Balin,” said Arthur. “I don’t want to kill these good men. I need to unify the land, heal the wounds my father and Vortigern before him inflicted, or I’m not worthy to be king at all.”
Balin stared in wonderment, pondering these strange notions. What was there to be gained in not eradicating an enemy?
“But surely they’re racing for Aneblayse now, to warn the other rebel kings.”
Arthur frowned at that, but a voice from the shore said:
“You needn’t worry about those two.”
It was Sir Ulfius, hobbling over, leading his horse.
“Aguysans was wounded, and Morganore lifted him onto his horse and fled south,” Ulfius reported. “I tried to run them down but my horse tripped. It was nearly the death of me. Of course, they could double back to warn their allies.”
“We can’t spare knights to go shaking the bushes for two men,” Arthur said, as behind him, the army began to gather itself and splash across the river. “Well done, Sir Ulfius.”
“And well done, Sir Balin!” said King Leodegrance, riding up with Ector and Kay. “I saw you account for fourteen men in the river.”
There were whistles from the others around Balin.
Fourteen! That many? He hadn’t counted. He felt a giddy rush of satisfaction, particularly at receiving such appreciative praise in front of Arthur. Fourteen of the best knights in the world. They would ride no more, because they had met him.
“You fight like a wild savage, Sir Balin,” Kay said appreciatively.
Arthur nodded to Balin.
“May you fare as well at Aneblayse.” He spurred Hengroen to reach the forefront of the army, and Leodegrance and Sir Ector followed.
“Well fought, Sir Balin,” said Ulfius, heaving himself up into his saddle. He sat there for a moment looking at the sky and sighing. “I’ll sleep well tonight.”
“Take care, old man, or Christ himself will be the one to wake you, with angel trumpets,” said Kay.
Balin fell into line with the column, and it wasn’t long before a thin, dark haired knight had sidled up alongside him. Balin recognized him from Arthur’s pavilion as Lucan, Bedivere’s brother.
“Sir Balin, what of my brother? Is he well?”
“When I left him, yes,” Balin said. “His quick thinking saved us on the road. I owe him my life.”
Balin realized this just as he said it. Had they attacked the army alone as had been his own instinct, they would now be dead or captured. He wondered how Bedivere’s deception had held up when they reached Aneblayse.
Balin looked at the concern in Lucan’s eyes and felt again his own.
Once they reached Aneblayse, he might end up crossing swords with his own brother.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was well past nightfall and the moon was doused in clouds when they reached the far edge of Bedegraine. Across the trickling river, they saw the lights of the hamlet of Aneblayse down in the valley below, huddled in the center of the black plain of stubble rye and wheat fields, which were dotted with campfires. This was the breadbasket of Leodegrance’s realm.
“How many men?” Balin heard Pellinore ask.
“More than enough to crush us,” answered Kay. “Unless the night itself decides to take up arms for you, brother.”
He was hushed.
If Arthur gave the order to charge into the midst of the huge encampment now, they had a good chance of wreaking havoc. Yet somewhere down there in the dark, his own brother Brulen lay or sat near a fire, to say nothing of Bedivere and the innocent woodcutters.
The clouds shifted in the sky then, and moonlight spilled upon them, arrayed on the crest of the Bedegraine Road like a gleaming wall of steel.
Down below, a horn sounded, followed quickly by another and another.
“The moon at least,” said Kay, “has proven unsympathetic to your cause, brother.”
All around, Balin heard the rasp of swords clearing their scabbards, orders shouted to squires, and the footmen shuffling into place, their pikes gleaming in the lunar glow.
“Archers!” Arthur called.
The bowmen sent flights of arrows streaking across the face of the warden moon, but after that first flight, an answering volley had them tucking in behind their shields. Most of the enemy arrows went whistling among the trees. Several men cried out. Balin felt one missile go winging off the edge of his shield.
But this was not to be decided by archers shooting blind in the night.
Arthur called for the attack. Balin slammed shut his visor and set his lance, urging his horse down into the valley as the knights of the three kings charged for the campfires and the footmen clanked behind.
The clouds drifted again like the hands of a shrinking spectator shielding the scandalized eye from the bloodshed about to occur. The darkness hid their approach, but it also hid their path, and several knights crashed into unseen hedgerows or flipped over stone field walls. A few plunged into the river, which was too deep to ford.
The obstacles didn’t cull enough of the charge to render the attack a disaster, and Balin, like most others, steered for the silhouettes scrambling around the campfires. He found himself at the forefront of a body of chargers, thundering over the wide stone bridge that spanned the river, and rode right through the first of the fires, scattering embers and leaving a man spitted on his lance.
He didn’t see the pavilion beyond the firelight until it was too late and crashed right into it, upsetting a support pole in the process and bringing the whole affair down around himself and those who had ridden in his wake. Horses screamed and panicked against the clinging, stifling canvas. There were curses all around him, and he knew the enemy was in here with him. Something struck his horse, a spear or a sword, and the animal shuddered between his legs, giving a heart wrenching cry and fell. Balin actually felt it die.
He managed to land on his feet and swung his sword wild, connecting with the offending horse killer, hearing his edge cut meat and canvas both. The man went down gurgling, but from what kind of death, Balin couldn’t guess.
They fought like rats in a sack, and Balin prayed he did not, in his confusion, strike any friend. Finally he found space to split the tent and regain the freedom of the night air.
The moon had forgotten its earlier prudence and now gazed in full morbid fascination upon the carnage in the valley.
Balin saw the lights of the village winking out, the peasants no doubt blowing out candles and huddling in the dark, desperate to discourage the ravenous beast of war rampaging in their fields from turning its attention to their homes. Around the other fires, men fought on horse and foot like intricate shadow puppets enacting some grand performance. Very near, he saw a man-at-arms pinned by a lance like a butterfly in the campfire, screaming.
He managed to pick out Hengroen, unmistakable in the gloom, flitting back and forth like a specter with Arthur dealing death from his back amid a ring of knights.
Balin fought his way closer, contending with men who emerged bellowing from the dark and who returned to it whimpering and clutching at the wounds he ripped in them. Yet every time he neared the young king, Arthur raced off to another end of the battlefield, his bodyguards struggling to keep up with him. It became a distraction to his own livelihood, and when he was nearly decapitated by a blow from behind, he resolved to focus on presently staying alive.
He did not know how many he slew. The battle raged like a night fever, in untold time. He did not know if they were winning or losing. Each death avoided became a small victory, each death inflicted a major gain in the push and pull of the greater fight. He was distracted, though. Worried for Arthur, and worried, too, that Brulen would come at him from the dark. He hesitated too often and allowed many more blows that he would have liked to land on his armor by peering at the arms of each knight he fought. The footmen with their deadly pikes were almost a relief. He slew them without a thought, like offending flies.
He narrowly avoided an unhorsed knight who charged at him with the end of a broken lance. Balin gutted him between the faulds and cuirass almost from instinct. This unknown knight had no charge, and when he sank to the ground bleeding, Balin was almost certain he had slain his brother. He stabbed his sword in the blood soaked earth and caught the knight as he fell forward, turned, and held him for a terrifying moment before he mustered the courage to raise the dead man’s visor.
The breath blew from him when he saw a stranger’s slack face, and he let the nameless man lie and took up his sword again.
Balin went where the tide of steel and blood buffeted him, and he soon found himself with his back to the dark village, the battlefield spread out before him. He could not tell foe from friend here. Tents burned brightly, contending with the moonlight and casting the sky orange. The cries of men in contention had become one unending wall of roaring sound punctuated by the incessant ring of metal on metal. The smell of blood was thick in the air.
The main road into Aneblayse had been barricaded with wagons. Balin was amazed to see the old woodcutter and his sons standing atop their still laden wood carts, the horses still in the traces, watching the battle, limned by the hellish light of it. They had been the last faces he expected to see this bloody night.
“Sir Balin!” the old woodcutter called down. “Ye live!”
“Thus far! Where is Bedivere?”
“Out in that maelstrom,” said the woodcutter, jumping down with surprising agility.
He strode toward Balin, passing from the light into the shadow, his whole bearing strange, not bent and feeble as before. He spoke words Balin didn’t understand. They sounded Gaulish.
The woodcutter’s two quiet employees answered him in the Gaulish tongue and got down from their respective carts. They went to the traces and began to free the old plough nags from their burdens.
The woodcutter walked past Balin to a nearby abandoned campfire and crouched before it, pulling his black muffler from his neck and wrapping it around a stick of firewood. Something gleamed and glittered around the old man’s neck as he leaned forward and held the wood in the fire till it caught.
When he rose and turned, an uncontrollable shudder went through Balin.
The black bearded, black robed wild man of St. Paul’s courtyard stood before him, the golden torc shimmering around his throat.
The wizard Merlin, his dark eyes ablaze.
And though Balin was painted red as a devil in blood and gore, the sight of that terrible man made him shrink back, even when he smiled at Balin in passing.
“Sir Balin’s horse!” Merlin called into the dark.
Balin was astounded to see his own lost horse step out of the shadows. He had been sure he’d felt the animal die, but there it stood waiting, nothing more than a shallow scratch over its heart where the spearman in the tent had apparently nicked it.
“Mount, Sir Balin,” Merlin commanded, raising the burning torch above his head as he walked toward the wood carts. “Arthur has need of you at the bridge.”
Balin did not doubt the man’s words. He touched the neck of his horse gingerly. It was cool from the night air.
“King Lot’s army has him surrounded,” Merlin went on. “Hurry!”
Balin climbed into the saddle and peered across the tumult, trying to recall the direction of the bridge. He looked back and wished he hadn’t. The two woodcutters had been transformed. They sat resplendent in shining Gaulish armor and ermine capes atop fine fresh warhorses in plate barding.
Merlin thrust the fiery brand into the first of the wood carts. It flared up with a blinding, unearthly white glare. He did not pause, but did the same with the other two. Each emitted the same phosphorescent blaze. Balin had to shield his eyes against it and finally looked away.
That glorious fire lit the entire bat
tlefield as though it were the sun, and Balin saw every man afield turn aghast toward the strange sight. It was as though a fiery seraph had walked out of Aneblayse.
For Balin’s part, it lit the path to the bridge over the river where a knot of horsemen and foot soldiers roiled and surged, as sure as if he had been pointed the way on a map.
Then the glow faded.
He feared to look again behind him, but he steeled himself, and did.
The carts and the ricks of wood were gone. Where the stakes had been piled stood hundreds of archers. Where the kindling cart had been, an equal number of Gaulish footmen. And as for the cart that had borne the wooden lances, there was arrayed a hundred mounted armored knights bearing the arms of Benoic and Gannes.
“Balin!” Merlin roared, wheeling fierce and terrible upon him, pointing directly at him with his staff. “Go! Attaque!”
Balin could not have been more motivated than if he had seen Satan himself rear up from hell and crack a whip.
He kicked his horse and charged, and behind him, he heard the roar and thunder of the Gaulish army. They were not some illusory phantasms conjured by Merlin. They were the reinforcements the scroll had promised Arthur; not harried by any unfortunate winds in the channel at all, but secreted into the very heart of the enemy encampment in three lowly woodcutter’s carts.
He did not need to cleave a path through the battlefield to the river. Men on either side cried out and parted before that supernatural charge. Some threw down their weapons at the sight, thinking them some infernal force mustered from hell itself at the behest of the Merlin.
Balin leaned low over his horse and concentrated only on gaining the bridge where he saw Hengroen pitching and turning, a white mirage in the center of a cluster of cavorting figures.
As he neared the edge of the bridge, his heart stopped dead in his chest. Arthur was pressed between two of the mounted rebel kings. One was an enormous, black bearded man in a fur-trimmed mantle he didn’t know. The other was the tall, wraith-like King Lot of Orkney.
Orkney.
Brulen was a knight of Orkney now. His brother could be in this tangle of men somewhere or already floating dead down the river, pitched from the bridge.
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