Mounted soldiers who charged down from the sea bluffs to defend the town rode into baffling smoke and whirling battleaxes.
The killing went swiftly. After hacking the legs of the blinded and confused horses and gutting the riders, the Wolves overturned salt boilers, smashed drying racks, and ran all howling and soot-streaked down upon the townsfolk, fishermen, and salt peddlers crowding into the oncoming tide.
To the Christians, the barbarous, bellowing hordes plunging out of the wind-whipped flames delivered a brimstone reckoning: Satan had come to gather their souls to hell, and many died on their knees praying for salvation even as their heads flew from their shoulders.
By the time the Christian war boats came to shore to engage the berserkers, they had to shove through jammed shoals of corpses. The floating bodies of their families! Horror defeated the defenders, and the Wolves easily punctured the hulls with their mighty axes and dragged the floundering sailors onto the beach by their hair, the better to flay their flesh for the war drums.
The Graal
Ygrane listened aghast to her son's account of Morgeu's deceptive seduction and the conception of their incest child. When the king concluded and, with a sob, lay his shamed face in his hands atop the Round Table, she stood and walked away.
To an elaborately carved cabinet she retreated and opened its mahogany doors of inlaid mother-of-pearl to retrieve from its velvet-padded interior the Holy Graal. The good Sisters of Arimathea—none other than the Nine Queens of Avalon—had bequeathed the sacred vessel to her and Uther on a Christmas morning sixteen years ago.
The slender goblet of gold-laced chrome contained within its precious metal exterior the actual glazed clay cup from which Yeshua ben Miriam had drunk wine in celebration of Passover and his coming sacrifice—five centuries ago. The Annwn, the Fire Lords of supercelestial origin, had preserved the cup in an elegant covering of incorruptible chrome and gold filigree that somehow retained a magical charge of holy power. Ygrane prayed that this blessed magic would heal her son's acute suffering.
She placed the Graal in front of him, and even before he raised his head, King Arthor felt its grace. Like grape pressings darkening to wine in barrels, the squeezings of his heart—his memories of lust and shame—began to deepen, like slow dusk, to something more soulful.
While he gazed at his stricken reflection in the mirroring surface of the Graal, his mother spoke softly to him of the Nine Queens. "They dwell as spirit beings now, on Avalon. The isle of Avalon is 'Apple Land,' the ancient ceremonial site from where the Celtic gods once reigned before the Fauni drove them underground into the Dragon's lair. The Annwn—the angels of God—placed them there to witness the present, so that they may help change the soul of the future." She brushed a tear from his smooth cheek. "When you die, Arthor, you shall be installed there, and the eldest queen shall be set free to return to the rhythmic duration of death and rebirth. I swear this to you by all that is holy. You will represent these past ten thousand years of rule by kings, emperors, caesars, pharaohs, and chieftains."
Arthor faced his mother and met in her tristful stare the truth of what she said.
"You will serve the angels," she said, "and humankind for all that may remain of our future ... "
"Until the Second Coming." Arthor understood. "The Apocalypse of the Revelation."
"Which is what our enemies' god, the Furor, calls Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods." She took his hand in a consoling grasp. "So you see, your personal pain—the mistakes of the heart from your past and their consequence, however horrible—these are your private suffering. They are the shadow of your flesh cast by the light of your radiant being. You must accept these mistakes, Arthor. You must accept their shame and hurt without allowing those terrible feelings to betray who you really are by swaying your actions." She released his hand and placed hers upon his chest. "Let that evil that is your own remain here, confined within the borders of your heart."
In a Dark Way
Rex Mundi walked the Earth. Dagonet, Lord Monkey, Merlin, Azael, and a nameless Fire Lord drifted alertly within this gruesome amalgamated being's interior space. The Fire Lord and the demon Azael circled each other in a perpetual stand-off. Their countervailing tension turned them round about each other with sufficient momentum to last a thousand millennia, and the magical strength that spun from their dynamo sustained the improbable shape of the Dark Prince.
Meanwhile, Merlin contemplated how to recover his own body from Gorlois. Dagonet gazed at the world, astonished to find himself so tall and so powerful in Rex Mundi. And Lord Monkey wondered what next he would eat.
Into the distances of the afternoon, Rex Mundi wandered, seeking to orient himself. Merlin, years before in his quest to find Uther Pendragon, had crisscrossed all of Britain, and he knew every vista in the land.
We are not far from Rameslie, he observed of the rolling terrain, and he directed their attention to a field of sunlight between two ridges of aboriginal forest. Through that notch, the sea town awaits. They make excellent fishcakes.
Lord Monkey widened their stride at the news of food.
What will the townfolk make of uth? Dagonet inquired. Are we not a tewibble thight? He glanced down at their hands, fleshed in leathery hide and thick, sparse wires of hair.
These are good, hard-working Christians, Merlin addressed Dagonet's concerns. If we praise our Savior and cause no trouble, we will be accepted despite our unconventional aspect.
With Lord Monkey's eagerness to reach his first meal since munching an apple in Avalon, Rex Mundi made swift progress along neatherd's paths across the pastureland. By late afternoon, they climbed a knoll that overlooked Rameslie and there confronted the grisly remains of the Wolves' slaughter. Black, smoldering ash outlined where the town had once stood. Scattered upon that dark field glowed dozens of pink melons—the scalped skulls of the townsfolk.
Lord Monkey and Dagonet skittered with fright and tried to run away. Merlin's stronger will held them fast. "This is the Furor's doing," he spoke aloud, his voice dense with grief. "He boldly challenges our new king."
Let uth away, Merlin! Dagonet whinnied in terror. The Wolves may yet be here!
"Oh that they were, Dagonet," Merlin droned with regret. "Then you would see real devil's work."
Vampyre
Morgeu rode by night. She drove a wagon south, determined to find the soul that had served her father and that she had chosen to quicken the child in her womb. She knew from the mangled apparition that she had seen of Gorlois that the Furor had marked him—and that meant that the north tribes held him. The Furor's people occupied the land of the Picts to the north and the domain of the Cantii in the south-east, and her trancework told her that the Picts did not have him.
On highways rife with potholes, slewed by the frosts of seventy winters and hazardous to ride by dark, Morgeu traveled fearlessly. The horse that pulled her wagon she endowed with night vision, and she herself scanned the landscape with eyes that shone crimson from their pupils. The very stones of the highway blazed up before her magic gaze.
By day, she pulled the wagon behind hedges or into dense copses and slept. She dreamt the secret life of the unborn that swam soullessly within her. Under the dark archway of blood, she swam upstream toward the dream wall of the uterus. Greedy to suck at the root-blood of the mothers, she became the protolife in her. She muted fetal memories of the sea and the fish-thrash, and she concentrated her eagerness to drink the salt-milk that would impart the knowledge this unformed child needed to be human ...
On her third night of travel, a man pale as moonlight and with a courteous face stood in the roadway. The horse shied from him. Morgeu knew his morbid character at once. "Finally!" She threw down the reins and sat back with a look of relief. "I've been looking for you."
"And I for you, lady in red." The pale man coughed gently. "Will you come down to me? Or shall I come to you?"
She beckoned with her ringed fingers. "Do come."
In an eyeflash, the
man sat beside her, and the horse jolted with fright and rocked the tented wagon. Morgeu hushed it with a soft whistle.
"You have a commanding way with animals," he complimented her.
Morgeu allowed a small smile. "I have a way with all manner of things." She noticed that the shadowless man wore a beautiful tunic from a lost time, a white garment stitched with intercoiling serpents, leaping dolphins, and a large butterfly of the soul at the center of his breast—an ancient burial garment. "You are an old one."
"Older than you can guess, lady." He placed a cold hand on her thigh, and her whole body chilled.
"Oh, nothing is quite that old." A bemused laugh spilled from her. "I would guess you came to this frontier four centuries ago, with the second legion, Legio Adiutrix, under Agricola—but not as a commander or even a soldier." She stared hard into his narrow, surprised face. "You have the gentle countenance of a mercantile aristocrat. Have I surmised correctly, Terpillius?"
The ghostly man pulled away, and fangs glinted at the corners of his gaping mouth. "What creature are you that reads souls?"
"I?" Morgeu reached out and firmly took the startled stranger's cold wrist in her hot hand. "I am your mistress."
[]
Mother Mary, I have needed time to think of what to say to you after all that I learned from my mortal mother. Ygrane is a good woman, fairer of soul and face than I had dreamt since I first learned of her at Camelot. She loves your Son as I do. She lives as He has taught us. Her days are spent tending to the sick and the impoverished in the countryside beyond her fastness at Tintagel. The fastness itself she has converted to an abbey. The Holy Graal has been entrusted to her, elaborately caparisoned in chrome and gold by the angels. She is truly a woman of holiness. And yet—and yet, Mother Mary, she speaks to me of Avalon, the Isle of Apples, the Nine Queens and rebirth, the transmigration of souls—matters that seem more pagan than Christian. Though the angels themselves have set the Nine Queens to watch over us, these are pagan royalty. Ah, but then your Son has been with us only these past five centuries and the youngest of the Queens is over ten thousand years old. Perhaps, then, that is why our Father has chosen me to dwell among them when I die, to deliver to them the good news. And what of my soul? What of the Lord's promise of my salvation? Surely, that is vouchsafed me, even if I must dwell as a ghost among ghosts for thousands of years to come. Christians do not transmigrate, do we? The priests say no. We are not reborn again and again among endless forms as the Celts believe. Forgive me, Mother Mary, for bringing you these worries. I know not where else to take them. If only Merlin were here with me. I fear he is dead. How else to explain his absence? He did not arrange for me to become king simply to abandon me. I must assume he is with you now. I am to fathom on my own the mysteries that Mother Ygrane shares with me—if only there were time to fathom these wonders. Invaders swarm along the coast. They know I am here with the Dumnoni, and they attack to challenge me. Pray for me, Mother Mary. Pray that God will grant me the clarity and strength to defend our island kingdom.
Marcus Bloodied
The massacres at Droitwich and Rameslie enraged Marcus Dumnoni, and he ignored King Arthor's pleas to counsel with him and the two chieftains, Lot and Kyner. Impatient to track down the Saxons who had destroyed his two most productive sea towns, he led a mounted force along the coast. Arthor shouted after him from the ramparts of Tintagel. But the Duke had not given his pledge and was not bound to honor that man-child's commands.
"We must follow him!" Cei insisted when Arthor, frowning darkly, came down the bastion's stone steps. "Lead our troops!"
Arthor shook his head. "The troops must rest. The march from the north has exhausted them."
The experienced chiefs, Kyner and Lot, nodded in agreement with the king's pragmatic assessment of his forces.
Cei threw his hands up with a disgruntled shout. "Then what hope of winning the Duke's pledge if you leave him to fight his own battles? Think like a warrior, not like one of these tired old men." He nodded cursorily to Kyner. "Forgive me, Da."
"I'll not forgive such impudence!" Kyner shouted at his oafish son. "The king is right. Marcus is not hunting down Foederatus troops. Those are berserkers out there. Wolf Warriors. They've not come to Britain to steal land but to die."
"By nightfall, Marcus will feed the ravens," Lot predicted and turned to cross the courtyard to the barracks, where his clansmen anxiously awaited the command of their new king.
As Lot had foreseen, Marcus found little spoor of the raiders until late in the day. From out of the long light of evening, the Wolves emerged from where they had hidden in the dunes. They had known that the destruction of the two ports would provoke an army of revenge. And they had read the land accurately enough to place themselves directly in its path at the hour of two worlds.
Marcus ordered his cavalry to charge along the high rimland above the sea plain and so sweep down lethally upon the Saxons. The Wolves had anticipated this, and during their daylong wait for their escorts to Skyward House, they had patiently severed hundreds of thick roots that secured the edge of the rimland to the forest beyond. Under the weight of the charging horses, the entire escarpment collapsed, sending horsemen toppling in sandy billows onto the plains below. There the Wolf Warriors waited with their honed axes.
With a shocked cry that emptied his lungs, Duke Marcus watched from the forest edge as horses and men tumbled through cascading sand and dirt to where the berserkers danced, their axes flashing in the scarlet light of day's end. He bolted forward, then quickly saw the futility of his sacrifice and pulled back. He had committed the bulk of his force to the charge and all that remained were himself, the mounted drummers, and two surgeons.
Pacing his steed angrily on the high ground above the collapsed scarp, he watched through burning tears as the Wolves danced in the crimson light and left behind the broken shapes of his soldiers before disappearing in the rush of dark.
The Furor's Man
Gorlois awoke ensconced in Merlin's body, alert and brisk. He found himself sitting in a pit naked, mired in feces and dead leaves. A cry from above yanked his attention to a red-bearded face glancing down and shouting again in Saxon dialect, "The Furor's Man wakes!"
This one glimpse allowed Gorlois to peer deeply into that man's private dream—Vagar of Gelmir's Clan, proud of his lance arm, fearful of betrayal by his damaged left knee ...
The Lawspeaker appeared overhead. His bald head bobbed and leered with satisfaction. Images from his heart rushed through Gorlois, and the duke beheld the brute chords of danger this man played on the instrument of his body—harrowing fasts and trance potions.
"Stand back, Hjuki the Lawspeaker," Gorlois called and lifted his hands above his head. "Stand back and pour the cisterns!"
The Lawspeaker moved out of sight, and a moment later, as Gorlois had foreseen, several large men stepped to the brink carrying big vats of water that they poured over him. The cascade rinsed away the fetor that plastered him, and moments later, a knotted rope fell to his expectant hands and pulled him out of the pit.
Slow pulses of the sun beat in everything, illuminating the deepest recesses. The Furor had marked his soul with the strong eye and had granted him the power to see the truth of everything.
His upheld hands revealed the truth of himself: the ghost of a bold ravisher in flesh woven by Fire Lords, whom the Celts called Annwn, meaning The Otherworld, as if those radiant entities were not individual beings but manifestations of a transcendental realm. And they were. He saw that. In the grain of Merlin's skin, he perceived their solitary, purposeful love for the Origin, the source of infinite energy from which this cosmos had emerged thousands of millions of years ago in an explosion of pure light so intense no form could exist at all until the cold, dark vacuum had chilled light to matter ...
The Lawspeaker pulled Gorlois' hands from his staring eyes, and the guards scrubbed his body with pumice stone and lathery sponges and doused him with water scented with aromatic woodruff. While they
dressed him in the Furor's colors—loose black trousers, orange bodice stitched with jet raven signs, a red jerkin with onyx buttons, and wolfskin boots—he gazed into the Furor's face among the soaring clouds.
One arctic eye stared back. In its gray depths, he witnessed the future—the swarming hours of the days ahead, the journey north to the cluttered rivertown of Londinium, the surly, Persian eyes of Severus Syrax ...
"Do not peer too deeply, Raven's Man," the Lawspeaker advised. "What you see there will break you."
Gorlois heeded that counsel and shifted his penetrating gaze across the broad face of the Furor to his other eye, the empty socket in whose blackness floated all mortal beings. Glittering dew on the great web of life, each creature reflected its own small spark of original light within the darkness of death.
Saved by the Devil
Through hazy morning mists, Marcus Dumnoni slumped back to Tintagel with those sorry few that remained of his warparty—two surgeons and several drummers. The survivors left the drums behind in the forest, where they had lain under cover of darkness all night. They had feared that the berserkers might stalk them by starlight, and they all, including the Duke, had hobbled their horses and laid hidden under leaves farther away. At first light, they had untied their steeds and moved on.
Duke Marcus, figuring his enemy would hug the coast, followed a longer route to the citadel, along a forest path. He was wrong. The Wolf Warriors had spent the night among the dunes and by false dawn had moved inland to kill whomever they crossed. They met Marcus in a grove drizzling with morning light.
The battle shouts of the Wolves defeated the helpless cries of the Duke's small party, and only the horses screamed louder as their legs broke under the slashing blows of heavy axes. The Duke plunged to the ground with his steed, sword raised high.
The Wolf and the Crown (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 3) Page 11