Orion and King Arthur (30 page)

Just in time. He, too, had thrown his axe at me, and I barely had the time to knock it away from me. It thudded into the ground at the feet of the first one’s
donkey, frightening the poor animal so much that it reared on its hind legs, throwing the Saxon to the ground with a hard thump.

Hefting the man’s axe in one hand, I grinned at the goggle-eyed amazement on their faces.

“Now that you’ve disarmed yourselves,” I said gently, “perhaps you can show me the way to your chieftain.”

Their leader climbed slowly to his feet, his eyes fixed on me as he
unconsciously rubbed his bruised rump.

“You’re no messenger,” he muttered.

“Yes, I am.” Then, remembering a ruse that crafty Odysseos had once used, I added, “I am a messenger from Arthur, High King of the Britons. If he had sent one of his knights, the three of you would be bleeding corpses by now.”

They were clearly impressed. Reluctantly, their leader said, “We will take you to our chief.”

As I climbed back into my saddle, the Saxon walked back to his donkey while his two companions picked up their axes—eying me all the while. I let them rearm themselves, then followed them toward the peaceful little village.

3

“I am Gotha, chief of the West Saxons.”

He was a big, burly man, heavily muscled despite his graying hair. His eyes were iron gray, too, suspicious and scheming.

Gotha’s
so-called fortress was nothing more than a long wooden hall with a pitched roof supported by stout timbers. It stood at the far edge of the village, on a low bluff overlooking the gray, churning sea. I could hear the crash of surf against the rocks out there. Its packed-earth floor was empty: no tables, no chairs in sight. Only Gotha sitting before me, with a handful of bare-chested warriors standing
on either side of him.

The hall reminded me of another mead-hall I had been in, long ago, at an earlier time, King Hrothgar’s feasting hall of Heorot. Dimly I recalled a hero named Beowulf, and monstrous beasts.

Gotha sat at the far end of the strangely empty hall, on a high wooden chair decorated with skulls mounted on poles; their sightless eye sockets seemed to be staring at me as I stood
before the chief of the West Saxons.

“I am Orion,” I replied, “messenger from Arthur, High King of the Britons.”

Gotha rubbed at his gray-bearded chin. “I heard that the lad has made himself High King. Some sort of magic involved, eh?”

I put on a patient smile as I replied, “The only magic, my lord, is his courage and skill in battle.”

“Him and his knights,” Gotha murmured darkly. Then his
eyes shifted beyond me: I heard the tread of several pairs of feet making their way along the hall toward us.

Turning, I saw it was a trio of Saxons, each bearing a long stave. Mounted at the ends of the staves were the heads of the three warriors I had met earlier that day.

I turned back toward Gotha, astonished at such brutality. He merely smiled cruelly at me and said, “Three warriors who
together cannot kill a single man have no place in my clan—except as decorations.”

And he laughed as his servants fixed the staves in the bare earth behind his throne.

Abruptly his laughter cut off and he grew serious. “Now then, messenger, what does your High King have to say to me?”

Trying not to stare at the three gaping heads, I recited, “Arthur, High King of all the Britons, invites you
to his castle at Cadbury, along with the chiefs of the other Saxon bands, as well as the chiefs of the Angles, Jutes, and other tribes.”

“To his castle?” Gotha laughed harshly. “Does he think I’m fool enough to go there, where he can murder me in my sleep?”

“My lord,” I said, “Arthur wishes to make a lasting peace between the Britons and your invading tribes—”

“Invading?” Gotha roared. “We
were
invited
onto this island, messenger. We fought the Picts and Scots for the older Ambrosius. Our reward was to be told to pack up and go back to our own lands.”

“Arthur is not asking you to leave Britain. He wants to find a way for you to live here in peace.”

“There can be no peace between his people and mine! Our destiny is to drive the Britons into the sea and take possession of this island
for ourselves.”

I could hear the echo of Aten’s scheme in his words. The Golden One was behind all this, I knew.

“My lord, this island is large enough for your people and Arthur’s, both. You can live here in peace. Why make war? Why see your young men slaughtered when you can have what you want without bloodshed?”

Gotha stared at me, scowling. For many moments he was silent. At last he seemed
to relax slightly and said, “Perhaps we should talk of peace, after all.”

The warriors flanking either side of his throne twitched with surprise.

Raising one hand, Gotha said, “Tonight we feast. Then I will send my reply to your High King.”

I wanted to heave a sigh of relief, but I knew that Gotha and his fighting men would take that as a sign of weakness, so I said merely, “You are as wise
as you are brave, my lord.”

4

As dusk fell across the village, Gotha’s hall filled with warriors. Scurrying servants had set up long tables and benches for feasting. A huge fire blazed in a stone-lined pit at the far end of the hall, its smoke rising through a hole in the roof, much as the fire pit of Priam’s palace in ancient Troy.

Gotha sat at the head of the hall, in the center of the longest
table, sloshing beer out of a golden cup that was decorated with elaborate Celtic designs. Spoils of battle, I realized. The chair to Gotha’s right was empty; I wondered why. Had someone failed to show up? Was Gotha waiting for an important guest?

I was led by a servant to a place on the bench at one end of the wooden table. The assembled warriors were dressed in fine tunics and grasped cups
and mugs in their strong hands. Servants kept pouring beer for them, while a pair of what looked to me like elks turned slowly on the roasting spit over the cook fire.

Food was piled upon the tables in abundance, everything from pigeons to savory melons, but the warriors paid hardly any attention. They were too busy swilling beer, and getting more uproarious by the moment. I noticed that none
of them bore weapons, except for the half-dozen men standing directly behind Gotha’s throne. Guards of honor, I thought.

Behind them, in the shadows by the wall, stood the staves with the mounted heads of those three warriors. A reminder, I thought, from Gotha to his men: losers don’t live long in this tribe.

The men were getting rowdy, sloshing beer on one another and roaring with laughter.
I was splashed more than once, but I stayed at my place on the bench, trying to behave as a messenger from the High King rather than one of these drunken Saxon louts.

At length, though, Gotha raised one hand and the hall quickly fell silent. All the warriors sitting on the long benches looked expectantly toward their chief.

Gotha peered down the length of the table and said in a loud, commanding
voice, “Orion! Messenger from the High King. What are you doing down there? Come, sit here beside me.” And he indicated the empty chair next to his own.

I rose slowly, made a polite little bow, and replied, “Thank you, my lord. You are most gracious.”

The hall was absolutely silent as I made my way along the table to the chair beside Gotha’s. I could feel the eyes of more than a hundred flaxen-haired
warriors watching me.

I arrived at the chair and made another little bow to Gotha. “With your permission, my lord.”

“Of course, of course,” he said, with a toothy smile. “Sit down here, as befits a messenger from the High King.”

The instant I sat, his six guards grasped my arms and pinned me to the chair. Gotha slipped a long knife from beside his plate and rose to his feet as I struggled uselessly
against the strong arms holding me down.

“The reply I send to your High King,” Gotha said, loudly enough for everyone in the hall to hear him, “will be your head!”

The Saxon warriors cheered lustily and Gotha came at me with the knife. Someone grabbed me by the hair and yanked my head back. He was going to kill me, and this time Aten had no intention of bring me back from death. I could hear
the mocking laughter of the Golden One in my mind.

Gotha pressed the sharp edge of the knife against my throat. I felt it cutting into my flesh and knew I had to translate myself out of this placetime—or die the final death.

Closing my eyes as the Saxon’s blade cut deeper into me, I willed myself to the eternal city of the Creators. I had translated myself through spacetime to that nexus before,
I would do it again.

I could hear Gotha’s sadistic laughter, feel his knife slicing my throat. Then suddenly all sensation ended. I was suspended in the continuum, frozen in cryogenic cold and utter darkness.

I had no eyes with which to see. I had no body to feel pain or joy or love. There was nothing except my consciousness, the central awareness of my own being.

Vainly I tried to translate
myself through the continuum to the Creators’ city of monuments. I could not reach it, and I realized that Aten was blocking me, keeping me away from it.

Was this the final death? An eternity of nothingness? Oblivion?

And then, like a faint tendril of hope, I felt the warm touch of Anya’s presence. But it was weak, delicate as a butterfly’s fragile wings, feeble as the last whisper of a dying
man.

“I can’t help you, my love,” she said to me in my mind, her voice filled with despair. “There’s nothing I can do to save you.”

Interlude

I felt warm summer sunshine on my face. Opening my eyes, I saw that I was sitting on a grassy lawn in a wooden framed slingback chair, wearing a sky-blue uniform of cotton twill. Several other men in similar uniforms were sitting in a motley set of chairs scattered across the grass.

The sun was just above the distant wooded hills, shining in my face. Lifting a hand to shade my eyes,
I saw a half-dozen airplanes parked on the grass, sharp nosed, looking vaguely like sharks. Hurricanes, I somehow knew.

A phone rang. Turning in my chair, I saw that the ringing was coming from a small wooden building, little more than a shack.

A red-faced man stuck his head out the shack’s only window and bellowed, “‘A’ flight! Scramble!”

The men sitting around me leaped to their feet and
sprinted toward the fighter planes. As I struggled out of the sling-chair, a broad-shouldered man with gold-flecked brown eyes and a short brown beard grabbed my arm and helped me to my feet.

“Come along, Irishman,” he snapped. “Up and at ’em!”

Arthur? I wondered. Here, in this placetime? But he looked older, harder, grimmer.

Hardly knowing what I was doing, I raced alongside him toward the
planes. He veered off and I puffed to a halt alongside one of the Hurricanes. I saw a pair of small black crosses painted beneath the rim of the cockpit. Then my eyes went wide as I saw the name painted in flowing script across the nose:
Athena
.

A pair of ground crew men were standing on the plane’s wings by the open cockpit, beckoning to me. Engines were coughing to life all around me.
Athena,
I thought, as I sprinted to the fighter. Even though Anya could do nothing to help me escape the final death in Gotha’s timbered hall, my plane was dedicated to her.

By instinct I clambered up onto the wing and squeezed into the fighter’s cramped cockpit. I recognized a parachute pack on the seat. As I plumped down on it, one of the crewmen flipped its straps over my shoulders while I automatically
pulled up the thigh straps and clicked them into place.

“Christ, Irish, you’re goin’ t’be the last one out,” the second crewman yelled in my ear as he handed me a soft fabric helmet.

“Better late than never,” I muttered. Like an automaton I whipped through the preflight checklist and started the plane’s engine. It was called a Merlin, which made me smile. It came to life with an explosive roar
and a burst of gray smoke from its exhaust manifolds.

In less than a minute I was bouncing along the grassy field, the earphones in my helmet crackling with voices and frantic instructions. Most of the flight was already in the air; I saw the plane ahead of me leave the ground and pull up its wheels.

While I pushed the throttle forward and my Hurricane lifted into the blue summer sky, I realized
I was in England in the summer of A.D. 1940, by the Christian calendar. Britain was at war against Nazi Germany, facing invasion once again. I was known in this time and place as John O’Ryan, a volunteer from the Irish Free State flying with RAF Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain.

Arthur’s Britain was nearly fifteen centuries distant, but I had escaped the final death that Aten had planned
for me. Without Anya’s help. Without the aid of any of the Creators. I had translated myself across the worldlines on my own!

Once I had cranked up the plane’s landing gear and fastened my oxygen mask over my face I concentrated on getting into my assigned position: tail-end Charlie on a vee of three planes. Our flight of nine Hurricanes flew in a vee of vees. I somehow knew that the pilots called
the three-plane formations “vics.”

“Dorniers at angels twenty-two,” I heard the flight controller’s calm female voice in my earphones, “heading for Hornchurch.”

The formation of Hurricanes angled off to the right, leaving me struggling to catch up with them.

“Close up, you bloody Irishman! You’ll be a sitting duck for the bastards!” Arthur’s voice, harsh and demanding.

I felt the invisible
hand of gravity pushing me down into my seat as I edged the throttle higher and tried to catch up with the rest of my flight.

“I see them! Twelve—no, fourteen flying pencils, two o’clock high.”

The Dornier bombers were slim as spears, painted glossy black with German crosses in white on their sides and the crooked swastika against a blood-red stripe on their tails.

“Climb above them.”

“Watch
out for their fighters.”

“Looks clear so far.”