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by A. A. Attanasio

  in the saddle, bewildered, the sword Lightning held

  fecklessly aloft. Only a handful of people can see him in the dark.

  "Dracon!" he cries, as he watches his army dissolve into the night. "Dracon Vitki!"

  A riderless horse wheels by, eyes staring white with

  fear, and clatters into the cane.

  "Grandfather Vitki!"

  Merlinus hears his king shouting for the dragon-

  magus, and though he hoped not to have to call upon the aged magician this soon in the campaign, he speaks the barbarous words that summon the dragon-man.

  Darkness shrouds Merlinus' view. Those who can

  see, the archers and infantry who are with the king this

  night, witness a lightning storm rise swiftly out of the soggy ground. Swamp gas flares into green flames. Ball lightning bounces over cattails.

  The king's sturdy dun gelding rears up aghast with

  azure flames, rising almost vertically. An eerie, astral fire wafts from the sword Lightning, and by that unearthly light Uther summons his army around him.

  In a conflagration of cold fire, the king leads the

  advance against the frightened Picts. The Britons' panic-stricken defeat reverses in an instant to violent victory.

  Believing the Holy Spirit has descended upon their king, the Christian soldiers themselves become berserkers.

  Whole squads martyr themselves in frenzied forays against the startled barbarians and overrun them by sheer

  numbers.

  As dawn glims across the wide plains, the enraged

  army slogs south under the king's banners of boreal lights.

  Will-o'-the-wisps and fox fire prance around them as the slaying of Picts continues, until the first shafts of sunlight shred the king's ghost fires. Then, he returns the fight to his warlords and rides wearily back to Ygrane.

  *

  Uther sits in the bright aura of his wife's magic and shadows forth all his fears. She takes them and blends them with blue in its many hues of that day and night.

  Glamour soothes him. Relieved of his animal woes, he

  accepts his destiny: seed-carrier.

  Strange thing a seed—a compacted destiny made

  of the destiny that preceded it. Everything not a seed is falling apart.

  This makes sense now, with his green-eyed wife

  lying beside him in their tent. Tomorrow he must return to the field, where the sores of his heart will open again. Only for tonight do love and the child in her make sense to him.

  Tomorrow, he will hear again the flutes of bone and the eerie wails on the wind from the Hall of Heroes. This night, the auspicious stirrings in his wife's round belly are enough.

  In a dream, asleep in Ygrane's lap, he sees down

  from Britain through Europe as across a deep grassy field.

  He peers into a rocky horizon, with the vanishing point at the birth place of the savior. Jesus stands there. Not even Jesus as he imagined him in church and in prayer but

  actually Yeshua, the man with a Nazarene profile and the long locks and beard of his faith. He is a man. He is a swart, Semitic man with particular features, gentle, manly features as yet unmarred by the kiss of thorns.

  *

  Uther returns to his command emboldened by his

  dream. His stunning night victory in the marsh has secured his authority against all the blunders that follow. No one will dispute him again, though, in fact, he remains a terrible general.

  The king has no imagination for killing. His wizard

  advises him to let his generals command the field. Merlinus presses for mercy, vociferous in his belief that the

  countryside need not be swept clean of invaders as the king's brother once attempted. It is enough to get the king and his pregnant queen to Londinium, there to give birth to a new order.

  "The ordering can be done later," Merlinus

  concludes, "once our forces are united with Severus Syrax.

  You must keep him closest to your side, for he has

  inherited the best-paid infantry in the island—and surely, as your weakest ally, plots against you."

  Uther, undaunted by Merlinus' fears of lingering in

  the countryside, encourages forays to seek and destroy known bands of raiders. With the feeling of his dream kept close at heart, he finds the courage to fulfill his Jesus-drama, to be the particular man God has made him.

  As time passes, each hamlet greets him and his

  Celtic queen with renewed ebullience. Previously isolated coloniae throw open their gates to Pendragon and his Celts, frantic with festivals and triumphant ceremonies in their honor. At each stop, the ardor of the people for their heaven-blessed king requires Uther to set up the round table and display the sword Lightning and the Holy Graal.

  The journey becomes a pilgrimage.

  It seems to matter not at all that Uther Pendragon is a terrible general. Wray Vitki has made him great. Stories of Uther's miraculous victories against the pagans swell his ranks with zealous volunteers—more inexperienced troops that drain his supplies and slow his march. The army

  moves with such stately procession that word of the

  Dragon Lord's return flies ahead to the most remote

  northlands before the allies complete a third of their journey.

  Pagan battle groups descend from every tribe above

  Hadrian's Wall, and across the North Sea the Saxon

  warlord Horsa mobilizes an army. Bitter from the death of his clansman, Hengist, Horsa, a chief among the storm raiders, gathers boatloads of vengeful warriors and sails up the Tamesis to Londinium. From there, they dispatch

  assault teams to distract and weaken the allies' procession

  while the Saxons harass the countryside and intimidate Severus Syrax's small, unmounted army.

  The journeys between the coloniae become more arduous, and soon Pendragon's army progresses only a

  league or two a day. Sporadic enemy attacks whittle away at them. These are the very battles Merlinus has foreseen with Raglaw—brutal fights across creeks and in road

  ditches, with blood-spray, bone-shards, and brain-sludge flying.

  The excellent defensive scouting of the Celts

  assures that no assaults surprise Uther—but there is no end to the assaults. All the pagan tribes of Europe have come to Britain to exact revenge for their humiliating losses to the Dragon Lord. Messages from Severus warn of a

  mighty tribal gathering outside the city wall. His words hint at negotiating with Horsa.

  By the time the trees open to full leaf and the

  maniac bands of killers in the forests and hills have become harder to see and more lethal, the allies have forgotten about driving the barbarians ahead of them.

  Hangers-on fall away. Volunteers evaporate. And

  Pendragon rolls his round table east, leaving the old stone road blackening with blood behind him.

  Only Christians are buried, and those hurriedly in

  rock pile graves. The Celts are satisfied to be cremated, and pyres burn for them every day. The enemy dead

  remain where they fall, and Pendragon's Wheel rolls on.

  Ygrane and Uther ride with the round table, the Graal carried between them, no longer displayed but locked in a black-veiled crate on a draw-cart.

  Twice a day, at twilight, Ygrane drinks from the

  Graal. She has created a ceremony around this that

  includes the priests and the Druids—a ritual enactment of Yesu's sacrifice of healing, for the Christians a mass they use to consecrate their Eucharist, and for the Celts a rite of daily renewal.

  Ygrane uses the Graal to look for the unicorn and

  Falon, who stalk Morgeu. They appear small, as on a

  Chinese mountain. The unicorn flares ahead,

  foreshadowing Falon's slower path. Life-force spindles from the sun-beast—so thin these days, worn to a thread by all the queen has demanded through the winter.
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br />   The mystic creature must lie beside Ygrane with the

  Graal between them and drink sunlight, starlight,

  moonlight, and the floes of invisible light that it magnifies in its clear body. They must lie like this for a moon before it will regain the strength to carry a man.

  And still, Ygrane uses her magic to take more of the

  unicorn's unique vitality for the child in her, more of its

  serenity and fearlessness. Sometimes, she feels she will go mad without the unicorn. Life tumbles inside her. Spring explodes from every hill and bird-loud valley. Yet

  everywhere she looks, she sees corpses.

  With her hands on her belly, willing the magic of life into her child, she rides in her litter, the curtains open. She does not turn away from the carcasses. These are the

  sacrifices to Morrigan that her life requires. God has called her to this, and she accepts it and feeds its frightful, terrible magic to the child within her: life eats life—and God alone makes this holy.

  Uther has stopped looking. He watches the tumbling

  clouds carrying summer along the horizon, a little closer each day. The people believe he is wonderfully imperial and cheer him when they are not hiding from the roving raiders.

  He is not imperial. He is appalled. Back at Tintagel

  in the cool autumnal days around the table, in the severe presence of the warlords, the march on Londinium had

  seemed so plausible. Now it produces relentless horror.

  Ygrane continues to lave Uther with glamour.

  Protecting her child from the death shrieks and war yelps that slash toward them day and night begins to use all her strength. She wants Uther to ride with her, where they can help each other.

  Now that the attacks have increased, Uther will not

  leave the sight of his troops. The king and queen remain apart until the wide, blue Tamesis leads them to the high timber walls and smoky spires of Londinium.

  By the time Horsa's horizon of tribal armies comes

  into view with its fields of hide tents and groves of lancemen, Uther has amassed a mighty force of his own—

  a host of Britons and Celts fivefold larger than the force Ambrosius arrayed on these same alluvial plains the

  previous year. The king lifts his face to the blue afternoon and the summer clouds sailing for eternity, and he prays with ravenous hope for peace—then orders an immediate attack.

  He wants it over. He does not want to wait even the

  one day it will take to combine forces with Severus Syrax.

  He commands an immediate full-out assault, because he does not want to face again in his nightmares the dragon-magus's cruel reptile grin.

  All the killing there is to be done, he wants done

  swiftly. His impatience overrides the strategies of his military advisers, including Merlinus. The army is

  exhausted. The enemy on the plains below has been

  waiting for them, growing stronger, frenzied by visions and visitations from the Furor.

  The king will not listen to the entreaties of the battle-chiefs, and they approach the queen to intercede. She will not. The timewinds blow every which way. All decisions are valid and none. The time for the sacrifice has come, when the king must offer himself to his fate. She stands aside.

  Events, which have passed for Merlinus in a wind-

  rush of time, now whirl almost faster than he can follow.

  Bors Bona leads the frontal charge across the river flats directly toward the sprawling barbarian encampment.

  Marcus Dumnoni and two of the Celtic commanders, Urien and Lot, sweep south to attack the flank.

  Messages fly by foot, boat, and carrier bird to

  Severus Syrax, commanding him to take the field at once.

  Uther leads his cavalry and Kyner's Celts along the river itself, on both banks. Severus does not emerge at once.

  Confused messages return to the king, stating that

  negotiations have already begun with Horsa.

  By then, the battle has flared. Uther sends one more

  set of commands to Londinium directing Severus to come forth from the city and attack the Saxon camps. Then he barricades the table, where Ygrane and a handful of her fiana remain with the wizard to guard the Graal, and he summons his sword and rides to war.

  *

  Falon follows the unicorn. Through rain and floods

  of sunlight, they hurry south on the indefatigable roan the fiana stole from the Picts a season ago. The decay of the vampyre slowly heals in him.

  The unicorn gives no notice to the actions of Falon.

  It is tired. With its torpid reflexes, it must keep to higher ground or fall under the claw.

  Where are the Fire Lords? it wonders as the witch-queen's magic reels it closer to Morgeu and the Dark

  Dwellers Azael and Ethiops. It is frightened. Death, which in the herd is a return to the one love, looms across the horizon of the Dragon's back, strewing black blossoms.

  Burned fields and torched villages mottle the green

  summer forests.

  Falon, too, senses death ahead. The river plains

  shimmer below in haunted distances of heat haze and

  battle-smoke. The spoor of the Y Mamau stains the land more freshly: warm fire-sites, fresh hoofprints, and corpses rolling in the river, headless.

  *

  Morgeu feels vibrant and swollen with the glory of Morrigan. She rides swiftly through the woods, her warriors racing at her sides. Ethiops flushes their beasts with so much power they fly like shadows. At midday, they pass through a wind gap in the low hills and emerge from a forest that stands above them like bearded giants. The blue day widens into grasslands where the Tamesis flows in its prisms.

  The brown scrim of Londinium's cooking fires drops

  down the sky and intertwines with the smoke from the

  Furor's camps. Farther off, pastures fold into themselves an imperishable green. Streaks of lightning embroider the stacked horizons of the lowlands in a summer haze that blurs south.

  The Y Mamau point west. Across the wide river

  plains patched into farmland by thickets of dwarf evergreen oaks and low stone fences, a massive army advances.

  Even at this distance, where the troops look like cloud shadows drifting over fields and roads, Morgeu recognizes the black-and-green wind socks of Uther Pendragon.

  Morgeu dismounts and paces through gillyflowers

  and foxgrass in the shadows of the high forest. Morrigan begins speaking in her head, suggesting a night assault when Uther's men camp to rest for tomorrow's great battle.

  "Pendragon attacks!" several Y Mamau begin

  shouting, and Morgeu snaps free of her reverie and climbs onto her horse to see better. Unbelievably, the stable hand is ignoring the basics of military tactics. He has no command camp, no formations, and no obvious sequence

  of attack—yet he attacks! The hordes who have gathered around him on his victorious march across the island surge toward Londinium.

  Under a tree of clouds, the armies clash. Morgeu

  and her Y Mamau ride furiously toward the havoc. She

  must get close enough to inflict her wrath. Ethiops

  vigorously pumps her with speed and battle luck. He, too, has been surprised by Pendragon's irresponsibility. This impulsive lunge by the allies leaves him no time to meet again with Azael. He must leave his comrade to his own wicked ingenuity.

  Ethiops directs Morgeu and her snout-masked

  dozen through trampled fields, among ax-swinging wild men. No arrow or lance touches any of them. The demon flings his avengers toward a central caravan, where rays of light fantail from a black-tented wagon. The Graal is there.

  And ahead of it on the wide road that cuts a straight line to the walled river city, a bizarre, giant wheel rolls.

  Ethiops is certain now, Lailoken cannot be far.

  Atop a knoll swarmed about by Kyner's heavily

  arm
ored fanatics, Morgeu rears her mount. The running tide of inflamed fighters drifts away before the death chill presence of Ethiops, and for a moment the demon exults, Let there be chaos!

  Battle cries and mortal screams pierce the furious

  clanging of metal and the uproar of shouting men and

  horses. The small details of the battlefield—the flies and the choruses of ravens and gulls come to pick at the

  dead—interest Morgeu, while Ethiops feels about for

  Lailoken. Since the wizard stopped talking aloud to himself, he has become harder to find.

  Morgeu and her warriors stare with fascination at

  the camphor fumes of souls that leak out of the dead and burn in the loud daylight, flames without ash. A collective shriek jumps from them at the sight of the unicorn galloping through the gritty, sulfur vapors of afternoon, corpses rocking like drowned men beneath its hooves.

  Tired as the unicorn is, it has enough strength to kill Morgeu. It feels this anguished necessity from the psychic tether that binds it to the queen. Ygrane wants her

  daughter freed from the Dark Dweller.

  Ethiops hurls the Y Mamau at the charging beast. Its

  tusk flashes, and four of the masked warriors burst like sausages. Hooves blur, and four more riders are flung broken into the grass. The remaining four spread out to encircle the furious thing and pierce it with their metal blades. Spryly, it capers between their swords, buckjumps, and lances with its radiant horn each of the bitch masks.

  The demon despairs before this elusive and

  vehement creature. He concentrates himself inside Morgeu and draws her obsidian knife—the knife of sacrifices that has long fed Morrigan's murderous appetite. If the unicorn is going to rip away the demon's servant, then the unicorn will die with her.

  That instant, Falon charges out of the carbon-

  streaked wind. Flame arrows crisscross in the air behind him. He bounds onto the knoll and stops the unicorn with a cry. "I have the charm!"

  At the sight of the gold-flaked crust of rock in Falon's fist, Morgeu jars loose of Ethiops's possession. The blood cries of battle soar louder and colors brighten. The young enchantress startles to find herself on horseback facing the unicorn. Sunlight breaking over the horn dazzles her with rainbow sparks and momentarily glares her view of the charm.

  In that obscured instant as light inflicts darkness on Morgeu's brain, Ethiops decides to sacrifice this gutsack for the horned beast. He blows forward in her, and her horse lurches and bucks in electrocuted fury, sending her flying.