Boldly, Wolf Warriors leaped in for the kill. Their scapulars of human teeth and shriveled human ears jumped about their throats as they swung strenuously with their axes. Excalibur and the scimitar flashed and glinted, and the brave ones fell, choking on their own blood. A craven one, an archer on a scorched knoll, shot the arrow that pierced the king's thigh.
Arthor fell, and the grisly warriors surged forward. Bedevere's scimitar dropped two in one stroke and repelled the others. "Lean on me, sire!" He wedged his armless shoulder under the king's arm and tried to bolster him upright. "Lean on me and we will walk the distance to the grove."
"I will not retreat!" Arthor gnashed, lurching upright, tears of pain and anguish running down his smudged cheeks. Another arrow clanged off his shield, and he raised Excalibur and hoarsely shouted, "For God! For Britain!"
The Terrible Victory
The king's cry lost itself among the manic yells and war-shouts of his assailants, and he heard nothing of Bors Bona's army until they crashed through the scalded trees and trampled the furious wall of men around him.
Bedevere held Arthor down, protecting him with his shield from stray arrows of the warlord's bowmen. "God has truly heard your cry, sire!" Bedevere's blood-freckled face grinned fiercely. "We are saved!"
The mounted archers at first did not recognize Arthor, and Bedevere stood up and cried, "Stand fast! Your king is wounded!"
Plastered in mud, Bedevere and the arrow-struck man at his feet appeared as two more of the enemy, and the chargers stampeded toward them, crushing Saxons and rebel Britons under hoof. Bedevere waved his arms to no avail.
Arthor lurched to one knee and lifted Excalibur over his head. The arrival of these soldiers come to crush his enemies lifted him above his pain, and he staggered upright, rocking to his feet. He held Excalibur to heaven.
"Britain!" he shouted. "Britain!" His body filled with joy so fully at God's answer to his prayers that he would have gladly received a death blow from these men. He stood tall before the onslaught of heaving horses, pouring all his strength into his cry, "Britain!"
"The king!" a mounted archer yelled and seized the reins of the rushing steed beside him. The muddy forehooves churned in the air a hand's breadth from Bedevere's proud face.
Warhorses reared backward as their riders caught sight of Excalibur and the shout rose louder with more strong voices joining, "The king! The king!"
The nearest horsemen leaped from their steeds and knelt before Arthor. He lowered Excalibur, and Bedevere eased him to the ground, to the very bottom of the cliff of mercy.
And there lay the king, smiling at clouds carrying away the souls of the dead. His heart jumping inside him, he shook with amazement that he had lived to see Britain saved. The words that the soldiers excitedly spoke cleansed all the last stains of fear from him: Bors Bona had arrived. The fierce warlord of the north had declared his allegiance to Arthor before all his men and had won their fealty to the king, to the last man.
Britain was saved. And Arthor lay in the mud outside the house of his life. He could have died happily then. All that he wanted as king, he now possessed: the allegiance of every powerful British warlord and every Celtic chieftain—all united to repel the invaders and to preserve for Britain the sanctity of peace and the hope of prosperity for her own people.
A surgeon arrived, and the king laughed tearfully through the pain as they cut the shaft from his thigh, laughed with joy for the dead from his ranks, who had sacrificed everything and won victory for the living. He laughed for his native land. And as his laughter spun out to tears of relief, pain swarmed in and jolted him unconscious.
Bedevere laid Excalibur along his side, and the warriors carried their king on a litter out of the scorched forest to Camelot.
When he woke, Ygrane and Bedevere sat beside him where he lay upon a ticking of swansdown in the sunlight of the citadel's central garden. Ygrane had ordered him brought there so that he would not wake beside the Round Table to find the Graal gone or come around in his own bedchamber and learn that Merlin lingered in a coma. She had dressed her son's wounds herself and cleansed him with her own bruised hands.
Reports from the field, scratched hurriedly onto parchment, lay upon the garden sundial in a heap of small scrolls. Bedevere had read them all as they came in and, before the king could speak, happily announced, "Bors Bona offers his pledge to Arthor, high king of Britain. He regrets not offering his fealty sooner. Apparently sorcery bedeviled him in Londinium, and the weather stalled him south of Greta Bridge."
"The commanders ... "
"All are alive, sire." Bedevere held up parchments from each of them. "Kyner, Cei, and Lot are in the field with Bors. Marcus patrols the Amnis, blocking the enemy's escape by river. And Urien scours the hills north of Camelot, routing the adversaries who have fled there."
"The Foederatus legions—the Wolf Warriors—there are so many ... "
"We have learned that there were three legions—and not enough have survived our battle to pose a threat to Bors," Bedevere replied and then calmly related the details of their terrible victory.
Bors Bona's army had crossed the River Amnis at Cold Kitchen and swept into the burned forest. His mounted archers had sent the battle-weary foot soldiers of Syrax and Platorius fleeing, and his lancers had broken the already damaged Foederatus legions into smaller units that his troopers swarmed over.
Bors Bona himself, knowing his enemy, had crossed farther downriver and, at midmorning, had met Severus Syrax and Gorthyn Belgae on the highway hurrying south. With the magister militum weeping and pleading profusely and Gorthyn snarling and cursing, the warlord had them hanged at the roadside, both from the same bough, and gave strict orders for their corpses to be left untouched save by ravens.
Down near the World
Merlin plunged whimpering through the black abyss of infinite space, through eternal night. Where among the endless aisles of stars, among the empty vectors of the void—where was the hidden sun that warmed the one tiny world where he had known mercy? Where were the blue and silver weathers of the Earth?
Wrap me again in the wind—bless me with the murmurous rain—warm the black and dreamstrewn deeps of my brain with sunlight—return me, oh please, return me to the wide Earth's keeping—
The lives of the dark that he had lived in his prehuman existence haunted him—the hatred he had felt for these cold meridians of outer space, the evil he had embodied out of rage for the good of heaven that he had lost, the phantasmagoria of terrors he had carried from world to world through this very vacuum—all returned on him with vivid clarity.
And he concluded that he had failed God. She had embodied him in mortal form on Her little planet, had given him purpose in Her creation, a destiny that would have redeemed his murderous past, and he had betrayed Her. He had arrogated to himself Her powers, as if he were Her unique agent instead of his true self—a simple tool She had reclaimed from the lightless warehouses of Hades.
The Nine Queens had tried to warn him. He had stolen a soul. They had tried to warn him to return that life. He would have killed Morgeu's incest child if he had not been stopped by the boy—halted not even by a full-formed man, but by a child and his charge, the boy he had hoped to guide to Her purpose.
He had failed. He understood that as he hurtled through the blind depths. He had behaved again as a demon, had used his powers to assert his will, to fulfill his animosities. He had met evil with evil.
Merlin accepted his infamy and stopped whimpering. He knew he deserved his calamitous fate, and he gave himself to his suffering and to the fullness of time.
A star glinted brighter.
He fixed then not on a star but a chalice of chrome laced with gold. The Holy Graal floated before him in space. It retreated ahead of him as he plunged through darkness toward a brightening orb of yellow refulgence among the tarnished stars—and there!—the blue crescent of Earth!
The Graal fell toward the azure planet, and he followed, swollen with relie
f and joy, swearing aloud in his mind, again and again, that he would never forget the humility he had learned on his dark journey.
Down near the world, the Graal vanished. Understanding flexed in him. The Fire Lords had removed the sacred chalice from the king's citadel. This vessel belonged in the company of those joined by the sharing of bread, not the sharing of enemies.
Merlin grasped the import of this and the certainty of how to retrieve the Graal. He fell to Earth laughing with joy, eager to share this bright knowledge with his king.
[]
Mother Mary, all is well. All is well at last! The kingdom is secure for now. Our enemies are broken. And those many who have died to defend our land, both pagan and Christian alike, are surely beloved of our Father. What they have won with their blood I will safeguard with my life and my watchful soul. Now, in this enormous flowering of hope, we cherish the chance to create an order of law and mercy, whose memory will endure the thousand years of darkness that Merlin predicts. And what we do this day and in the days to come, those are fables yet to be told, legends ours to shape.
Lips of the Moon
At the massive open gate to Camelot, guardsmen halted the wagon with the strange dwarf bedecked in tatterdemalion parody of a king's soldier. A frisky monkey squatted upon his humped shoulder.
As he began to explain himself, loud cheers resounded from the bailey, and the guards lifted their lances in salute. The dwarf stood on tiptoe atop the riding board and glimpsed the bent top of Merlin's conical hat moving among the jubilant crowd of the castle's outer ward.
The wizard had revived from his coma. In the company of King Arthor, who supported his wounded leg with a crutch, and the king's seven commanders, Merlin marched out of the castle onto the battle plains.
The beautiful sable horses from the dux Arabiae waited for them. Too delicate for battle, these proud horses served well for the swift journey Merlin had in mind. The victorious party would mount these fleet stallions, and the wizard would guide them to the secret place where the Fire Lords had delivered the Holy Graal for safe keeping.
Dagonet leaped up and down, waving his arms, until Merlin noticed him and budged through the crowd to the dray cart.
"Welcome, Dagonet!" The wizard clapped a congratulatory hand upon the dwarf's shoulder, and Lord Monkey startled and clung to Dagonet's head. "You did well in the service of the king—very well indeed—and you shall be rewarded. When he hears of your heroism, he shall make you a lord!"
"But look at me, Merlin!" Dagonet smacked his open hands against his chest. "I am ath I wath. I've awived where I began!"
"What does that matter, Lord Dagonet?" Merlin gripped both of his shoulders. "You are soon to be a man of station, as I promised you would be. That will surely impress Aidan."
"Not hith daughter!" Dagonet seized Merlin's robe. "Pleath, Merlin! I therved you well—in Wecth Mundi and on the quetht for the king'th wealth. Don't leave me like thith! Give me back my phythical beauty before Eufrathia seeth me."
A dark shadow clouded the wizard's long face. "Dagonet, you know not what you ask of me." He glanced over his shoulder and found the king and his men still engaged in greeting the happy crowd of soldiers and their families. "I have just returned from a great journey myself to find that our Holy Graal is missing. Without it, our kingdom is just a military confederacy with no spiritual center. I am on my way now to guide the king and his men to where the angels have hidden the Graal." He squeezed the dwarf's shoulders urgently. "You must understand. My powers are limited. If I use this magic to restore you to the physical stature that the Fire Lord imparted to you, I will lose my reckoning of the Graal's location forever. You understand, Dagonet."
The dwarf nodded slowly. "Of courth. The good of the kingdom ith at thtake—and that ith the gweater good."
"Splendid!" Merlin smiled benevolently. "You are a virtuous man. Beauty, after all, resides within." He turned to go—and stopped abruptly.
The air had gone utterly still and silent. The sun above gazed down like a large friend, fleecy clouds around it motionless and birds on the wing unmoving in midair.
The wizard spun about.
No one moved. In the gateway, the large crowd around the king stood locked in various attitudes of joy and admiration, gesticulations paralyzed, faces flawlessly immobile, mouths open, eyes unblinking.
Merlin walked around Dagonet and touched Lord Monkey. They felt cold as sculptured ice. Not even a hair of the monkey's fur would budge.
Sick fear enclosed Merlin. If he looked straight upward he knew he would see the limitless depths of black space. The cold in his heart instructed him: Into darkness he had been delivered for using his magical power with the arrogance of a demon. The Fire Lords who had helped Saint Optima fit him into a human body were coming, because humanity did not properly fit him. He existed less as a man than a demon, and that doomed him to peregrinate forever in darkness.
He shouted, and his cry echoed like a clumsy spirit, tripping over everything as it fled from him, unable to get away: no—no—no—no ...
Time erupted around him, loud with laughter and boisterous voices from the crowd in the wide gateway. Birds flashed, clouds raveled.
Merlin shrunk visibly under the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat and spoke with a voice blasted almost to silence. "I am using my power as a godling instead of a man." He put both bony hands to his face and shook his head, stunned by the enormity of the task that God had set for him. "How? How can we possibly succeed if I am to tend to every one of Your mortal creatures that comes to me?"
He turned his clasped face to the heavens, a howl in his wild eyes. "How?"
With a huge sigh, relieved to see the infinite heavens blue and lively with birds, he accepted his fate. His hands fell away from his hollow cheeks, and he smiled wearily at Dagonet. "Ah, how, how, how—that is not for me to know, is it, my precious friend?"
"I don't underthtand."
"Nor do I, dear Dagonet. Nor do I." Merlin pointed beyond the gate of the citadel to where the five-day-old moon smiled above the scorched timbers of the forest. "Go wait for me there, faithful servant, beneath the lips of the moon. I will meet you shortly after I have gathered the implements I need, and you shall be made beautiful once again."
How Old the World Is
When King Arthor and his commanders finally emerged from Camelot, a star burned in the charred depths of the forest. Moments later, Merlin and a tall, strikingly handsome man emerged from the cinderland. A monkey pranced wildly around them.
Bors whispered to the king, and Arthor summoned Chief Aidan from the crowd in the bailey.
"Here is the man your daughter loves," the king announced as Dagonet, in rags like clotted cobwebs, knelt before him. "Merlin has informed me of the arduous quest he completed to fund our treasury. Thanks to him, we have the resources now to rebuild Cold Kitchen and to help pay for the damages wreaked by Severus Syrax. He is a noble man, our Dagonet, and I decree him our new exchequer. Will you have him for your son-in-law, Chief Aidan?"
Merlin stepped away from the giddy crowd, exhausted by the magical effort that had transformed Dagonet. He wandered off toward where the corpse wagons waited to sort the dead. Priests and Druids and the families of the missing combed the open fields and the incinerated forest searching for the remains of the king's fallen. Ravens and dogs searched as well, less discriminately.
Sitting on a seared stump, the wizard contemplated what he had done. He felt disengaged from himself. A feverish chill occupied the vacant place in him where but minutes before he had possessed the knowledge of the Graal. The holy vessel was lost now, secure in some secret sanctuary, he knew not where.
The intelligence of the wind brought him news of the cooking fires of the living and of the journey of the dead into the mineral kingdoms. The day waned and soon he should have to inform the king that he had been mistaken about his certainty of the Graal's location.
He watched an old woman cutting the long golden hair from the head of a dead
Saxon, hair to be sold for wigs in the market towns of the south.
An angel came walking through the fire-blackened corridors of the forest. The wizard sat up straighter. The silver face shone too bright for Merlin to discern features, yet he sensed that this was the Fire Lord who had watched over Dagonet and who had occupied Rex Mundi with them. The angel sat beside Merlin on the stump, and the wizard's feverish chill vanished.
"I am glad you have come," Merlin whispered, filled with beauty delivered entirely over to him. "Yet, I am surprised. You are suffering—burning. I remember how it was. And I know that your numbers are stretched thin across creation, all of you working as hard as you can to hold together your fragile assemblies—complex organisms and societies you have fashioned to honor Her. Oh, yes, I have not forgotten. What you do is more than just honor. You work so hard, you endure such painful burning out here in the cold, because you believe there is a way back. You believe that the light of heaven that has frozen to matter out here in space can be used to construct machines for perceiving Her. The human brain is one of those machines, yes?"
The angel rose and walked off, leaving no footprints in the burnt grass. A scent, like a heap of flowers, cut through the corpse stench, and the feeling of beauty that he had imparted to Merlin lingered.
The wizard nodded like the doddering old man he appeared to be. "I did right to give beauty to Dagonet after having taken so much from him. That is what you came to tell me. You are kind, and you need not have troubled. You reminded me strongly enough in the darkness why God has put me here. And I have not forgotten how old the world is—or why you built it."
In the Garden of the Heart
Dagonet, tall and striking as a Greek marble come to life, accepted the king's gratitude and Aidan's proud blessing, and strode toward the massive gate of Camelot, looking for Eufrasia. His entire body tingled with the remembrance of lightning, of the magical power that minutes before had transformed him. Even Lord Monkey, perched alertly upon his shoulder, his fur fluffed, eyes sparkling, smelled clean as thunder.
The Wolf and the Crown (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 3) Page 34