By Force Alone

by Lavie Tidhar

  He inches his head, acknowledging the validity of her statement. Could he have been a butcher or a baker? he wonders. Or a candlestick maker. A useful member of society. He knew what he was: a parasite on the body politic – from the Greek: literally, a person supping at another’s table.

  That’s what he is, that’s what being a knight is. They are like leeches, feasting on the toil of those who can’t take the cure, who can’t fight them. They bleed the populace, a tenth tithe at a time, just enough not to kill them, just enough to keep them working.

  He knows what he is. And there’s a power in knowing your true self. Lancelot has no illusions, not anymore.

  Not after Germania.

  ‘Let the boy be,’ he says tiredly. ‘He did nothing but try.’ And, curiously – ‘Are they all like him, here?’

  She weighs the question. ‘Some are more competent than others,’ she says.

  ‘And this king? This Arthur?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. Not really answering his question.

  ‘You have designs on him?’

  He knows her kind, too. They’re parasites of a different order. More similar to the… the thing he’d encountered in Germania. They feed on power, the way knights feed on the weak.

  ‘That’s none really of your business,’ she says, but pleasantly enough.

  Fair enough, he thinks. He rises. Kicks the boy Agravain in the ribs just to check. The boy mutters something and shifts.

  And something clicks in Lancelot’s mind, like gears in that ancient Greek engine.

  He kneels by the boy. Shakes him roughly awake. The boy opens bleary eyes.

  ‘Why?’ Lancelot says.

  ‘Why?’ the boy says.

  ‘Why come after me three times?’

  ‘I wanted… To see.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘How good you were.’ The boy almost smiles. ‘To see if I could beat you.’

  Lancelot stares at him. ‘No,’ he says.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  The boy’s eyes dart from side to side. ‘So?’ he demands. ‘So what?’

  And Lancelot says, ‘Iblis.’

  A smile slowly spreads over Agravain of the Hard Hand’s face. It lights up his eyes.

  ‘She called herself Sebile…’ he says.

  ‘Ah, yes. Yes. Quite.’

  ‘She is the most amazing woman I have ever met…’

  ‘She ain’t all that,’ Lancelot says sourly.

  The boy doesn’t reply.

  Lancelot, still kneeling. ‘So, she sent you to slow me down?’

  ‘Slow you down? I could have killed you!’

  ‘Come on, kid.’ He says it gently.

  Agravain sighs. ‘I guess…’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  The boy’s eyes have lost their sparkle. ‘I don’t know. Will you kill me?’

  ‘Would you like me to?’

  ‘There’d be no shame in dying at your hand, master.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off with the flattery you little runt.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Stand up.’

  He has to help Agravain up from the ground. Pulls him by the arm. For a moment they’re close.

  ‘…Thanks,’ Agravain says.

  ‘Oh, get lost already,’ Lancelot says.

  The boy smiles. Then he nods to Morgan, says, ‘Mistress,’ respectfully, and goes to find his horse. In moments they can hear him speeding away through the trees.

  ‘What a pain in the ass,’ Lancelot says.

  ‘You like him,’ Morgan says.

  Lancelot shrugs.

  ‘So?’ she says.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘What would you have me do?’

  ‘It seems to me the boy has set you a challenge,’ she says.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘And half-paid you in advance.’ She glances pointedly at the bag of coins.

  ‘That king? What was his name – Leir?’

  She nods.

  ‘What’s he to me?’ Lancelot says.

  ‘A job.’

  ‘What’s he to you?’ he says.

  She smiles. ‘How perceptive of you,’ she says.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I think that bitch Morgause has designs on him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never you mind. Let us just say I’d like to see you carry the job through. And I could be most grateful…’

  Lancelot sighs. Another bounty, he thinks. How many more wet nights and smoky fires, how much more bad food or none at all, the long silent roads and the inevitable brigands, how many more empty battles with meaningless moves?

  ‘No, thanks,’ he says. ‘No offence.’

  But Morgan’s still smiling.

  Like she knows something he doesn’t.

  Why does he get a bad feeling?

  Why, oh why, does he dislike this?

  ‘They say a star stone fell some time back, down in the far, far north,’ she says. ‘I know nothing of this and care even less, for all that my bay cousin Merlin is obsessed with it. Folks such as us should not go near the radiance of fallen stars, they’re bad for our constitution. Nevertheless. So it is said, in recent times. That such a stone did fall, and that prospectors hurry even now to seek their fortune beyond the Roman wall, panning no doubt for celestial gold. And if you believe that claptrap you’ll believe anything, I’ll wager. But you, Lancelot. I see the gleam of greed in your pretty eyes as I say these words. You, too, hunger. Well, King Urien of the North, it is said, is fallen. And Leir controls the boundary into the Zone. Or so they say. I wouldn’t know, myself. I do not care for gossip.’

  He listens to her but he listens to the silences between the words.

  ‘Oh?’ he says.

  Her smile widens.

  More gears suddenly lock in the device that is Lancelot’s mind.

  Lancelot says, ‘Oh, fuck.’

  *

  ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!’

  The page was nowhere to be seen. The master and Parzival in their battle had already half-demolished the throne room. The knights of the blood re-rose, unwounded, and turned upon Lancelot and Iblis once again.

  ‘They’re linked to him,’ Iblis said, ‘to it.’

  ‘Fucking Germania!’

  Then it happened. Some blast of power, from the titanic battle between Parzival and the master, ripped open the shut doors.

  For a moment, escape was possible.

  The page came out of the shadows then. And Lancelot looked, and now he saw how puppet-like the page was – not boy, not girl, nor nothing in between but a sort of crudely formed simulacrum. Parzival shifted shapes, one moment a giant wolf, the other an enormous bat, the next a bear. A savage claw lashed at the master and slashed him across the chest and abdomen. The master cried in pain. Lancelot had never heard that sound, before.

  It filled the pit of his stomach with ice.

  ‘The grail – get the grail!’ the master screamed. His intestines came sliding out of his torn belly like sausages. Lancelot looked to the page, walking with the same jerky, mechanical steps, the saucer of blood filled to the brim, held high. The… thing turned and looked at him with empty cut-out eyes.

  ‘No no no no no no no,’ Lancelot said.

  ‘Help me!’ the master cried.

  Lancelot looked to Iblis. And Iblis looked to Lancelot.

  And, just like that, it was done.

  The way, perhaps, they had always secretly both thought it would be.

  ‘Help me!’

  Without a backwards glance they ran to the doors – and out of the hall.

  Back up those tunnels.

  The screams of Joseph of Arimathea echoing all the way behind them.

  Until they stopped.

  *

  ‘Iblis,’ Lancelot says, with loathing.

  ‘So it would seem,’ Morgan says. She scratches herself like a cat. ‘She goes by Sebile now?’<
br />
  ‘So it would seem,’ Lancelot says.

  ‘A friend of yours, I take it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, too,’ Morgan says. Her ears grow pointy and fur breaks delicately over her arms. ‘So, Lancelot, Knight of the Cart? Master of the Flying Sword, the Auroch’s Charge, and the Judean Lightning Strike, et cetera, et cetera, as the Romans would say? Will you take the contract?’

  ‘Leir?’

  She shrugs. She grows claws. ‘The woman’s not on the bill.’

  ‘What does she do for him, a bodyguard?’

  ‘How should I know? I do not like gossip.’

  The cat purrs at his feet. She butts her head against his calf playfully, and then she turns and without a backwards glance slinks into the woods and vanishes.

  *

  Afterwards, when it was over, they stood on the edge of the wood in the dawn’s early light.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  Iblis shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe Nubia. You?’

  ‘Maybe back to Judea, for a time.’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘Alright.’

  And with that it was done, and they parted ways.

  *

  He stares about him almost blindly before going for his sword and his horse. It was only afterwards, when he got to thinking. What the master had said about gold. How it fell from the stars. And how tired he was of cold nights, smoky fires, the dismal jobs of a sword-for-hire.

  How nice it would be, he thought, to be rich.

  He’d sleep on a bed of feathers and be served orange juice by pale-skinned barbarian maidens with the sun in their hair.

  He’d grow fat and wear many rings and wash twice a day in the hot baths and have his own masseur.

  He’d read a book. He’d always meant to read one.

  Maybe one of those improbable adventure stories the Greeks were so fond of, with monsters and great wars and dangerous women.

  So he thought, Oh, fuck it.

  And he set off, alone, to the coast.

  Taking a few small jobs along the way.

  Until he reached the sea, and found a ship.

  And thence to Britain.

  Oh, fuck it, he thinks.

  He picks up his sword and mounts his horse, and begins on the long, slow road to the north.

  PART EIGHT

  TURNING UP BODIES

  52

  ‘What’s his name again?’ Arthur says. They’re sitting in a watering hole on the outskirts of Lindum, near the banks of the Witham. Merlin’s drinking something green that might be pond water. Arthur doesn’t ask. He’s drinking a beer.

  ‘Launcelot or Lancelot, something like that,’ Merlin says.

  Arthur takes a meditative sip of his beer. ‘He sounds like a right tosser,’ he says.

  ‘He’s supposed to be very good, sire,’ Merlin says, almost reproachfully. ‘One of the best, really. Trained in Judea, or thereabouts. He knows gung-fu.’

  ‘What?’ Arthur says irritably. ‘I don’t know what that is. Also, I can’t honestly say as I give a fuck. Can he do it?’

  ‘…Probably.’

  ‘Then tell him a thousand pieces of gold. In fact, tell them all! Put out the word, far and wide. This shit’s gone on long enough. It’s time to end it. A thousand pieces of gold to whoever brings me Leir’s head.’

  ‘A thousand? But, lord—’

  ‘Can you magic the fucker away, Merlin?’

  ‘…No.’

  ‘No, I didn’t fucking think so. So stop moaning. We’re going to be rich!’

  ‘Yes, sire,’ Merlin says. He sips his greenish concoction. It’s really not so bad. Fillet of a fenny snake, tossed with oil and gently flaked, eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, and, well, so on and so forth. With a bit of blind-worm’s sting, which really gives the whole thing a nice, mellow kick.

  ‘We’ve got most of the south-east and the west up to Land’s End,’ Arthur says, ‘and we’ll soon enough have most of the land up to the Pictish Wall as well. We’ve got the men, and now we have the swords to give them.’

  ‘Yes, sire. And a witch’s bargain with the Lady of the Lake, that horrid hag Nimue.’

  ‘That’s no way to talk about your own relatives, surely.’

  ‘You didn’t have to put up with her for that long,’ the wizard mutters, but he lets it go. What’s done is done, and Arthur has his bargain and so be it.

  There’s only the two of them in this hovel of a bar. The lady Guinevere is out somewhere in the night, hunting. And no one knows they’re there, not even faithful Kay.

  They sip each from their respective drinks and wait.

  Till heavy footsteps tread the wooden boards.

  He steps in through the back door from the woods. He’s tall as he is broad, with a lined face and a wide nose and eyes that are still clear and clean, and the look in them is deadly. He wears a white bearskin robe over his muddy travelling clothes, and a sword and a dagger, and he is every inch a fucking king. His boots tread the boards as he comes to the counter.

  ‘What is this shithole?’ he says.

  ‘Like it? I got it cheap.’

  The man follows Arthur’s gaze to a corner of the room, where the previous owner lies slumped in a chair with a knife through his ribs. Pans and skillets hang on the walls. The man grunts and gestures at the bar.

  ‘So?’ says Outham the Old.

  ‘It is good of you to parlay,’ Arthur says.

  ‘I remember you,’ Outham says. Staring at Arthur. ‘You don’t remember this but I’ve known you all your life. I used to visit Sir Hector in his manor. You and that boy, Kay. You ran around in the nudd, like mutts. Covered in dirt and with your little dingles dangling. It’s a wonder you lived to adulthood in that whore’s nest. Or did you get the clap?’

  Merlin watches Arthur. Arthur’s so calm. Only that tiny pulsating beat of blood in his neck. He’s coiled so tight.

  But Outham’s oblivious. He is a king. He didn’t get to where he is by being timid. He got there by violence and the sword, and thinking he is the toughest motherfucker in any room he walks into. These two pissers mean nothing to him. He smiles. He’s enjoying himself.

  ‘Knew your da, too,’ he says. ‘Back in the old days. That old cuntbucket Uther could fight, I’ll give you that, boy.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Arthur says. He’s not touching his drink. Merlin goes to the edge of the bar, polishes a cup. Neither man pays him any attention. This is between the two of them. A disagreement of kings.

  ‘Say what you came to say,’ Arthur says.

  ‘Look, we’ve had our fun,’ Outham says. ‘My Franks, your barrow boys. A few skirmishes, enough spilled blood, more than a few spirits sent off to the, well, wherever. I’ve been thinking, Arthur. There’s really no reason why you and I can’t get along. I say forget about it. So you took a shot, so what? I say fuck it! You tried to go it alone, against the established order of the bosses, you know what? I say fuck that too. Live and let live, right? Got to give the boy his gumption. Between us we run half the whores of Britain and own a third of the old copper and silver mines. Between us we have enough men to take even the Angles out, maybe even Leir, that cunt. I have a connect on the continent for slaves, and a market in the far north for wool and British brides. We could help each other, you and I.’

  Outham the Old stares at Arthur out of those cold, watery blue eyes. He smiles.

  ‘Back when you were a pug I remember Hector’s whores taught you how to sew. You once fixed an undershirt for me, with those tiny little fingers, like a girl’s.’

  Arthur is still.

  ‘No more sewing,’ he says.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I don’t sew no more, Outham. Maybe you didn’t hear, on account of you’re so old.’

  ‘Think what you’re saying, boy,’ the king says, and he isn’t smiling anymore.

  ‘Come on, come on, come on,’ Merlin interjects. He comes round the bar.
‘A drink, to friendship. On the house.’

  Arthur relaxes. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘A drink.’

  Merlin pushes two drinks across the bar. He sidles unobtrusively to one side, standing a little behind Outham. The old king doesn’t seem to notice. He nods, tight-lipped, and then acquiesces.

  ‘Salutaria!’ he says. He raises the drink and downs it in one.

  Which is when Merlin bashes him on the back of the head with a frying pan.

  The big man sways. He can’t believe this is happening, his face seems to say. Not to him. he can’t believe, when it comes to that, that these two little pissers have the balls.

  ‘Motherfu—!’

  Then they’re on him, with cudgels and kicks. They work him over methodically. Merlin with the little blade he likes, plunging it over and over into the man’s stomach, his shoulders, his chest. Merlin licks his lips, feeling all that life force draining. Feeling that fading of power. Oh, it makes Merlin feel good. There is no better feast for his kind than the death of a king: and poor Merlin’s been hungry.

  And Arthur, all the while, never says a fucking word. He doesn’t use a weapon. He kicks and he kicks and he leans down to punch, until Outham the Old’s face is a pulped mess, like a squeezed Judean orange.

  Bones break and flesh tears and blood spouts; and still the old king won’t die. He lies there making strangled noises, blood in his throat and nose. But still his heart beats, and more, more, Merlin thinks, so close to climax.

  Then Arthur stops. He gets his sword. He looks down at old Outham.

  And then he smiles.

  ‘Fuck you, you Frankish cunt,’ he says. ‘You’re nothing to me, not even a breath. I would not give you the steam off my piss.’

  And he brings down the sword.

  The king is dead, Merlin thinks, as he had thought so many times before.

  Long live the king.

  ‘…Shall we bury him somewhere?’

  ‘Let’s have a drink, Merlin,’ the king, his king, his Arthur says.

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  They sit there at the bar with the dead man on the floor. And Merlin marvels at the death. How a man is so alive one moment, is animated by a spirit, moves and speaks, just is. Then, in a moment, there is nothing there, whatever spark had made it walk and talk and think and feel is gone, and all that’s left is meat, soon to be rotten.