“But London has had no King since Uther died,” Leogrance put in. “There’s not a soul there to challenge his so-called rule. All they’ve had is a poor people’s militia, a bunch of stallholders and merchantmen. They’d follow any man with a sword in his hand!”
“And Merlin’s boy is special, so he says.” Malgaunt grinned like a wolf about to strike. “Given away into Merlin’s care at birth.”
Guenevere stirred. “Taken from his mother? Why?”
“To save him from Uther’s enemies, is the tale,” Malgaunt sneered. “Merlin says the boy was brought up in secret, till the time came for the truth to be revealed—as the whole world now knows.”
“The whole world?” queried Taliesin mildly.
Malgaunt turned on him. “Druid, you know as well as I do that one of your kind can call the birds from the trees. Every petty king and lord turned up, every would-be baron or knight.” He looked around the table with a sarcastic laugh. “Believe it or not, Merlin has bewitched the Christians, too! They lent their great church for the so-called miracle. And there the boy pulled out the sword from the stone, so proving him the rightful King over all Britons—and allegiance to be sworn on the way out!”
“But the kings, the great lords?” Lucan demanded. “Surely they vowed to fight to the death to keep what they call theirs?”
“Do you doubt it? They all threw their gauntlets at his feet, and left breathing fire and sword. And so it must be war.”
Malgaunt dropped his head, and silence fell.
War.
Guenevere felt herself trembling and sick with fear. After all the years of peace so hard-won by her mother, must they face war, blood, and death for the dreams of one half-crazy man? “Who is this boy of Merlin’s?”
Lucan’s eye lit up. “A poor pretender should be easy to expose,” he agreed. The muscles tightened in his scarred brown sword-arm. “And easier still to kill.”
Taliesin folded his pale hands upon his wrists. “Only if he truly is an impostor, as you say. And only the Great Ones know the truth of that.”
“But the Christians?” Guenevere persisted, fighting a nameless sense of dread. “Why would they welcome this Arthur to their own sacred place?”
“Ha!” snarled Lucan. “They’ll welcome any man who’ll fight for them against the Old Ones and the Mother they have sworn to overthrow.”
Taliesin demurred again. “Perhaps they hope, as we do, that this youth can bring peace.”
King Leogrance snorted with disgust. “More likely their hothead monks, the so-called soldiers of Christ who never held a sword, are hoping for war!”
Sir Niamh laughed sarcastically. “Either way, the lad will do well to beware the embrace of the Christians. They fight by their own rules!”
Lucan was still thirsting for the kill. “Where is he now?”
“Seizing his hour of glory!” Malgaunt snorted. “Gone to Caerleon to claim the Middle Kingdom as his own. He and his rabble must be hoping for victory from a surprise attack. But Caerleon won’t give up without a fight.”
“Caerleon?” King Leogrance gave a disbelieving laugh. “It’s hardly worth a fight!”
Sir Damant agreed. “Not since Pendragon died and left the dogs to snarl over the bones.”
Sir Lovell rolled his eyes. “Dogs who won’t willingly go back to their kennels again!”
“Yet if this youth can settle the Middle Kingdom, what a blessing for us all!” Taliesin urged. “A strong leader could drive out the lawless and unite the warring factions just as Uther did. If this Arthur is the Promised One, then we of the Summer Country should be the first to wish him success. We have prayed so long for peace in that ravaged land!”
Lucan suppressed a furious start. “You pray, Lord Druid—some of us fight! Only the Severn Water has protected us from the same fate as the Middle Kingdom and her petty kings. We have endured their conflicts on our borders, we have paid with our lives for the peace we now have. You say this upstart will bring peace? I swear he’ll stir them up again to war!”
Outside the wind was howling louder now, and the logs of the fire were spitting like snakes on the hearth. The sour smell of damp wool seeped out of Malgaunt’s clothing, and a grim foreboding hung in the stale air. Guenevere took a breath and tried to sound assured. “Why should we fear the worst? This is not the first tale of the King who was to come, nor will it be the last hope of another strong High King.”
“Gods above!” King Leogrance burst out. “Try to think like a sovereign woman, daughter, not like a girl led by her foolish hopes! If this young upstart wants to make himself High King of all the Britons, of course we are in danger! The Summer Country will be vital to his plans!” A wide sweep of his arm took in the world beyond the nighttime walls. “With our strong fortresses, our horses and fighting men, our rich acres and good people, he must seek to make this land his own.”
Lucan gestured to his companions around the board. “Not forgetting what any king must covet, the order of our knighthood, sworn to our Queen even in the ranks of death!”
Malgaunt bared his teeth. “Spoken as befits the Queen’s champion, sir knight!”
Lucan rose to the bait. “Do you quarrel with that?”
“Lords, lords!” Taliesin frowned as the two knights snapped and glared, bristling like dogs. “No, sirs, there is a greater thing than that! The most precious of all we have in the Summer Country is our Holy Isle of Avalon, the seat of the Lady and the Great One she serves. The home of the Goddess is the key to the kingdom.”
“Yes!” Guenevere said passionately. “The key to the kingdom …”
Avalon, mystical island, home of my dreamtime, it is not the key to the kingdom, it is the kingdom. It is all I want and all I ever wanted, since I knew it was mine.
Avalon, Avalon, always calling … Avalon, Avalon, Mother, Lady, home—
“Come, my lords, come!” Taliesin’s strong voice broke in on her thoughts. “The stranger king may come to us in peace. We must not be the first to offer war.”
Lucan scowled, tensing again for action. “There are times when peace is only won by making war.”
Malgaunt eyed him jealously. “Do we need the Queen’s champion, sir, to tell us that?”
“We need all the champions we have,” came the hot reply, “above all, men who fight with swords, not words!”
Malgaunt flushed with rage. “Do you call me a coward?”
Goddess, Mother, spare us—
Guenevere rose angrily to her feet. “If war comes, then we fight!” she broke in. “Till then, I beg you, no more hostile words!”
Too late she felt the force of Malgaunt’s malice switching toward her. “And if war comes, my lady Guenevere, what happens to a country without a leader—without a queen—?”
“We are not without a queen!”
“—without a queen to lead us, while my dear sister is away with the Fair Ones in the twilight land—and you, her heiress, ignorant of war—”
“Not so ignorant, cousin!”
“—in which case, you must have a champion,” Malgaunt’s harsh voice went on. “If war comes, a man must lead on your behalf.” A slow smile split his face. “And who better than your own blood and kin?”
My blood and kin …
Not if you were the last man on earth.
She nerved herself to face down his inky gaze. “If I need a champion, sir, I will choose my own!”
Malgaunt grinned. “What will the people say to a queen who has no champion—one who thinks to rule alone like the Lady of Avalon herself, taking her partners as she wills, answerable to no man?”
Guenevere was in agony. “The Queens of the Summer Country have always chosen their partners and changed them as they wished. If I choose to live my own life, cousin, and be mistress of my body, who are you to say me nay?”
“So as Queen then, Guenevere—”
But Lucan could take no more. “Our Queen still lives, let me remind you, Prince!” he burst out. “And the Queen of
the Summer Country will always have a champion!”
“But the Queen’s champion will not always be you!”
And suddenly their hands were at their sides, their chairs thrust back, their half-drawn swords dancing in the flickering light.
“My lords, for shame!” Taliesin rose and stepped between them, his pale eyes on fire. “Dangers surround us, sorrows rush in, and our Queen lies on the very edge of life—is this a time for vile and vicious brawls?”
He paused, his face darkening as he spoke. “Hear me, for I hear what I would not hear, and see what I never thought I would live to say. The old moon is waning, and tonight she dies. I see a new moon rising among other stars.”
He passed a hand over his eyes and turned his gaze within. A great stillness settled on him, and the weight of his sadness reached out to them all. A faint high noise thrummed through the chamber, the humming of a thread stretched out to the full, singing its heart out in the moment before it breaks. In the air all around, there came a deeper note, the still, sad sound of all life’s loss and grief.
Taliesin’s voice was part of the concert now. “The feast of Beltain comes with the new moon. Let us pray that holy things may come at this holy time. And when the ceremonies are done, when the Beltain God has come to the Mother, and She has blessed the Summer Country, then the future will be clear.” He sighed. “A future that is fast upon us now.”
There was a slight sound behind them like a small thing dying, or the last whisper of a departing soul. Taliesin turned his head. From the shadow behind the throne, a dark figure moved out into the flickering light, throwing a black shape high up on the wall. Guenevere felt herself drowning in fear and grief. Only an intimate of the palace knew the private way from the Queen’s chamber to the place behind the throne.
King Leogrance stared at the newcomer like a wanderer from the Otherworld. “Why this coming? What is happening now?”
“Speak,” Taliesin said quietly. “We know the word you bring. Do not fear to break it to us now.”
Before them stood the Queen’s bard Cormac, a pale image of living grief. “The Queen,” he murmured. “The Queen—”
CHAPTER 7
“Pendragon!”
“Arthur! Arthur!”
“Pendragon à moi!”
King Carados awoke with an ugly start to the sounds of an attack. Ye Gods, he was having nightmares of Arthur now! Hurriedly he levered himself off the rank, sticky body of the kitchen maid to set Caerleon on full alert. And only then did he realize that it was too late.
“PENDRAGON!”
Silent among the loud cries of his men, Arthur led the attack straight over the drawbridge, through the archway, and into the central court. In the east, the sky was lightening toward dawn. On the wooded bluff high above, Merlin was raising all the power of Pendragon to throw in on his side. Gawain, Kay, and Bedivere were flanking him, and his other knights ran behind. Caerleon lay open to them now, castle, towers, and keep.
So far so good—better than he hoped. The sleeping watchmen might have been under a spell for all the alarm they raised. Now he could see the guards on the battlements frozen in a parody of surprise as he called up to them above the shouts and screams, “Throw down your weapons, and you’ll come to no harm! I am Arthur Pendragon, come to claim my own. Yield now, and you will live!”
They did not know, Kay reflected sourly as he ran with Bedivere at Arthur’s side, that Arthur had ordered all lives to be spared, whether they yielded to him or not. “We take no prisoners!” Kay had argued forcefully. “We can’t afford the men to guard them when they yield!”
Gawain had supported him, oddly enough, Kay thought, since he and the rough Orkneyan agreed on little else.
“When they’re stone dead, they don’t argue,” Gawain agreed with relish. “I was at the siege of Bel Rivers, when my lord was fighting there. When we took it, we killed ’em all, and not one of ’em came back for more!” He looked around to approving nods and grins from most of the other knights.
But Arthur had gone pale, Kay noted, and he knew that the point was lost. “These are my people,” Arthur said quietly. “I have been called to serve them, not to bring them death. I would not have a hair harmed on their heads.”
And so it had to be.
THE CAPTAIN OF the guard now leading a determined charge from the guardhouse seemed unaware that he was among Arthur’s cherished ones. “Follow me, lads!” he bellowed. “Stick it to them, get the leader first!” Behind him ran a solid square of men.
As he ran, the captain took in his opponent, the leader of the band. So this was the King, was it? Tall, and his armor—what? Ye Gods, he had only a breastplate and light helmet, no defense at all! Yet still he looked as merry as the month of May. He might have been in his own castle welcoming his friends. Not a beardless boy, then, the captain noted with a tug of something he did not recognize as anxiety, but a bastard right enough, a big bastard, and useful-looking too.
Still, the bigger they were …
“Now!” he roared as they bore down on the invaders, a paltry clutch of men only half-armed, like their master. A bunch of peasants, he told himself, like killing sheep. Still, it had to be done. Sword at the ready, he braced himself for the trusty one-two-three of close-body killing, stab, rip, up, stab, rip, up. He could have done it in his sleep.
Afterward he could never quite say how it happened; he’d practically had the great oaf dead on the end of his sword. But heavy as the stranger was, he’d somehow floated to one side, then feinted to the other and come up under the attacking sword with a dagger at his hand. The big bastard was close enough to kiss when he grinned and cried “Pendragon!” but his dagger was even closer, and that was that.
“PENDRAGON!”
Gods above, but Arthur could fight! Gawain thought this fervently as he ran along the battlements, his men howling on his heels, inspired by the defeat of the captain below. May all their battles be as easy as that!
But ahead of him, guarding the first tower, were a warlike bunch who did not look easy at all. A sergeant-at-arms and a group of seasoned men, they were the sort to sell their lives hard for no better reason than that they were soldiers, and that was what soldiers did.
“Arthur! Pendragon!” Gawain bellowed, thirsting for the kill. Much as he loved Arthur, he had little time for his leader’s policy of peace. To a son of the Orkneys, it wasn’t a fight without a good show of blood, well-hacked bodies piled around the walls, and a few heads to kick around the courtyard as footballs when all was done. And from the look of the opposition, this would be a doughty battle, with plenty of cruel blows.
In the event, it was enough to satisfy Orkney honor as far as the farthest isles. It did not end until Gawain had split his opponents’ shields, shattered his own short sword, and seen blood, real blood, drawn on either side.
At last the beaten defenders knelt at his feet, sullenly awaiting their fate. “Kill them!” arose by habit to Gawain’s lips. Then the face of Arthur swam into his mind. He waved aside the forest of hungry swords and gestured toward the wall.
“No need to kill them, lads,” he said magnanimously. “Chuck ’em in the moat! Sing out for Pendragon as you sling them over the wall. And make sure they can say ‘King Arthur’ before you let them back in to dry!”
GODDESS MOTHER, and all Great Ones, blessings on your name …
Arthur leaned heavily on his sword in the center of the inner courtyard, and raised a silent prayer of thanks. On the battlements above, Gawain had made a clean sweep of the guard. His other knights too had fought like heroes, as bravely as if they did not care whether they lived or died. Young Sagramore had proved worth a dozen men, and as for Griflet and Ladinas—well, there would be time to praise them later on. For now, most of the defenders had thrown down their arms, and the rest were being marched off to custody to think again.
He glanced around. Each of the four guard towers had been taken now, the drowsy watchmen stumping down sheepishly to join their fell
ows under lock and key.
“That’s it, then, sire.” Gawain grinned, appearing at Arthur’s side. “The place is ours!” His face felt tight from the dried blood on his skin, and he could smell his own rank sweat and the stink of others’ blood. Arthur had fought as hard as he had, Gawain knew. Yet damn him, how did he manage to look so clean and fresh?
Arthur turned his head. “Not quite.” He nodded across the courtyard toward the Great Hall looming through the gray dawn light. “We have one last ceremony to perform. Let us make our hail and farewell to King Lot’s six vassal kings.”
INSIDE THE GREAT HALL King Carados coldly surveyed the ruins of the feast. Without self-pity, he eyed the grim-faced knights who held them prisoner, and prepared himself to die. For folly on the scale he had shown today, he expected no mercy, and allowed himself none.
But he’d die resigned at least, if the fates would grant him one last wish. It was not for a sight of his faithful wife of twenty years, his six daughters, the prince his heir, nor even the joy of his life, his youngest son. It was to slit the throat of the fat slut who had made him betray himself, and watch her bleed to death like the pig she was. To die for her, to throw his life away for that sodden, sniveling, naked lump of flesh—a wild disgust raged like vomit in his gut.
At least the other five were acting like true kings now. He had despaired of Vause when Arthur’s men first burst in, seeing the soft face crumpling like a schoolboy’s, the gaping mouth, the gibbering “Whaaa—?” And Rience had woken up fighting drunk and done his best to get them all butchered on the spot. But Agrisance and Brangoris were old soldiers, schooled to the fortunes of war. Nentres, the youngest of them all, was wisely taking his lead from them.
The doors opened at the end of the hall. Carados heaved himself up in his seat and switched his attention to the figure coming in. So here he was, Merlin’s boy, the living miracle at last! A good fighting man by the look of that powerful body, and he had full command of his men as soon as he came through the door, there was no mistaking that. But the look he wore, that air of luminous authority, that—what the devil would you call it?
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country Page 5