The Raven Warrior (53 page)

The girl witch—child or woman, Uther couldn’t tell—cried out, a wordless sound filled with anguish. She reached up with one hand, trying to touch the fingers of the boy being carried by the soldier. The boy looked down at her face, answered, and tried to touch her fingers with his. The soldier pushed the tiny girl away and gave the boy’s body a violent shake. But oddly enough, whatever brief communication the two shared seemed to quiet the boy, because he was silent and stared ahead with an expression of fatalistic acceptance on his face.

Uther could hear shouts of approval rising from the crowd around him. They were, he thought, enthusiastic about this new diversion.

He had a moment to decide what to do. No one would consider a child this badly deformed as human. In fact, it would be possible to rationalize the boy’s death as putting a merciful period to a life so filled with pain that it would seem more of a curse than a blessing to its possessor.

But this was folly and Uther knew it. What lives, with the occasional rare exception, wishes to live. Not should any living thing be deprived of life without good reason.

Alex appeared at his side just then. “What do you plan?” he asked the king.

The harp was slung over his shoulder. “Protect this,” he said, and handed it to Alex. “Take care of Aife. Get her to my sister, if you can. And try to find and free the mare.”

Uther gave the corral that held the stallion a long look. The uprights were sunk deep into the earth, each resting in the skeleton of a sacrifice made to assure the sacred enclosure. Most of the sacrifices were probably human. But the cross-poles were lashed to the uprights with rawhide and were the enclosure’s real weakness.

“You might also try to lower the fence, if possible.”

Alex nodded and vanished into the crowd. By then, the soldier holding the deformed child had reached Uther.

The king blocked his path. “I will take his place,” he said.

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” the soldier asked. “This thing’s barely human.” He gestured at the child. “Ten times a year king horse has faced a human in the corral. Ten times the man or woman died. And all are buried under the uprights. Next year the corral will be one post bigger, and you will have the post in your belly and be lying there, the dry sand turning you to dust.”

Uther reflected,
A high-prestige position Severius must be in. The effort to reach it must have been both his and his father’s. Ten years of victories.

Organizing an assault on the high king wouldn’t be easy. The man who pulled it off would have to receive the support of every administrative district in southern England. The big Roman-British landowners would have to be willing to commit most of the barbarian troops who kept them in power; the power that had fallen into their hands when the Romans departed forever.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained. If they could capture the High Kingship, they would command the country up to Hadrian’s Wall and sweep all before them the way the Franks had done in Gaul. In fact, Gaul was already losing its Roman name and becoming Franca, or France. The dark, violent barbarians had successfully come to terms with the Gallic-Roman landowners, intermarrying with them, recognizing Roman law and allowing it to exist alongside their own more rudimentary code. And together, the two peoples were struggling to keep the worst features of Roman rule intact: oppression, religious persecution, and exorbitant taxation of the independent farmers and craftsmen, those least able to bear the burden. Slowly, even this memory of freedom was flickering out.

I am one against the night,
Uther thought.

He didn’t say any of this to the soldier.

“No! Bring the child back to his keepers and tell Severius, if you dare, that there are reasons why men ride horses rather than horses, men.”

The soldier dropped the child. It scuttled away as rapidly as possible, and Uther heard a wild, loud cry of enthusiasm from the crowd. What Severius had tried to do was little better than murder, but a strong, grown man might give the horse an interesting fight.

As quickly as possible, everyone began running to the sloping sandstone sides of the arena. Uther saw they were slightly step-cut to allow seating in rows, about ten rows to the top, and the sacred enclosure was shaped like a horseshoe, as was the corral. At the top were the best seats in the house, and many who had come brought chairs, cushions, and stools so they could watch in comfort. The other best seats were the viewing stands near the corral. These were already filled by the aristocracy from the pavilion. Severius and Igrane shared a comfortable couch at the top.

Uther turned and the wicked hatred in the horse burned from the beast’s eyes into his own.

“Are you there?” Uther whispered.

And Merlin’s voice answered, coming into his mind,
Yes, and I am going to kill you, old man. Your hour has come. When I was in the dog at the inn, the music your fingers called from the harp held me at bay. But now we meet face-to-face, hand to hand, and your magic is powerless against me.

Uther nodded and began unwinding the velvet and brocade mantle he wore. He tossed it over one of the crossbars of the corral. He heard a shout rise from the crowd and a rustling all around him. At least two dozen of Severius’s soldiers had stepped up and were pointing their spears into the corral.

In the sudden silence, he heard Severius’s command. “Once inside the corral, O singer of songs, there you stay. If you try to escape the stallion by crawling or jumping outside, my men have been ordered to run a spear through your body.”

Uther didn’t trust himself to answer. In spite of his bravado when he spoke to the soldier, he was about as frightened as he had ever been in his whole life. He gave a curt nod to show he understood, then stooped over and dried his sweat-covered hands in the dust.

Then, as he accomplished this, he dropped down on his belly and rolled into the corral.

“Surprise, Merlin. Here I come,” he whispered as he cleared the bottom cross-beam.

The stallion thundered toward him, teeth bared. But Uther might as well have been born on a horse. His first ride was lost in the mists that surround early childhood, and he had known how to control any horse since he could remember. To him, riding was as natural an action as walking or running. There was nothing he didn’t know about the tricks the brutes could pull on a frightened or inept rider. He’d seen, endured, and learned to counter all of them. Yes, there are indeed reasons men ride horses, not the other way around.

The stallion plunged in, charging right at him. He came to his feet in the hero’s salmon leap, which takes a man to his feet in one movement rather than the two usually required. He dodged the stallion’s charge as the man-beast raised his forehooves to dash out his brains, as he had the dog’s.

When anything commits itself, brute or human, it’s vulnerable. A second later, he was behind the rearing stallion and gleefully took the opportunity to land a savage, solid, paralyzing kick in the balls. The stallion screamed in much the same way as a man might have, as a raw agony whipped through his body. Uther felt Merlin lose his grip on the horse’s mind. The tormented animal fled him, running to the other side of the corral and backing against the fence.

The horse backed so close to the poles that he ran one muscular buttock into the point of a spear held by the guardsmen who surrounded the corral. This time, the stallion shrieked with rage, spun around and snaked his head through the crosspieces and seized the shoulder of the guardsman who had inadvertently nicked him. The guardsman screamed and Uther winced as he heard the bones snap like rotten sticks between the horse’s teeth.

But Merlin was frustrated, and Uther could feel it. He was trying to regain control of the horse. He wasn’t interested in punishing or destroying anyone but Uther. The depth and dedication of his hatred was so deep that it surprised the high king.

“Why?” he asked.

“Not even Vortigen ever dared defy me as you have. Almost . . . almost I managed to put my own candidate on the high king’s seat. But you broke my hold over Arthur and I failed.”

By then Merlin was in control of the stallion, and he lunged toward Uther, thundering across the corral at him. This time, at the last minute the stallion pivoted and lashed out, aiming his iron-shod heels at Uther’s head and body. Uther dropped and darted under the horse’s belly, through the solidly planted forelegs, spun around, and delivered a powerful punch to the horse’s tender nose.

The animal screamed again. The soft nose and upper lip are, next to the place where the king had landed his first kick, the most sensitive spots on a horse’s body. Horses get nosebleeds; the nostrils are not only sensitive but large and filled with ropy blood vessels. Blood spurted from the horse’s nose and pain nearly blinded him, again loosening Merlin’s grip on the horse’s mind. This time the horse trotted away shaken, blowing through his bleeding nostrils, and kept his distance from the man.

Rage,
Uther thought,
is debilitating. Fear is invigorating. A horse will in any case tire more quickly than a strong man.

Uther began to dream of victory. He reckoned without Severius.

The stone came out of nowhere, slicing open his upper cheek. He tasted blood on his lips. The second rock caught him just above the right eye, landing a glancing blow that tore open his forehead and blinded him in that eye as blood spurted from his forehead and poured down, blocking his vision.

The stallion chose that moment to charge again.

Uther tried to dodge, but the horse invented a new tactic. He swung his forehead at the man and, keeping his sensitive nose tucked under, slammed him into one of the uprights of the corral. Uther felt the wind go out of him in a whoosh, but his countermove was instinctive. He moved to one side, seized the horse’s braided mane, and vaulted onto the horse’s back.

The animal went insane. He reared almost straight up, screaming, enraged. For a second, Uther looked out over the heads of the crowd and a clear view of the screaming mass of people gathered around the uprights—spears at the ready, Igrane and Severius at the top of the viewing stands, fear and astonishment on their faces—all of this imprinted itself on his brain. Then another well-thrown rock smacked hard against his temple and his consciousness flew apart, shattering like a fine glass vessel when it hits the floor—into shards of dazzling light.

But even in the sudden darkness, he heard the howl rise as one from the throats of the spectators as the crowd became a mob. A second later, he was flying through the air, knowing he would land hard. But to learn the hero’s salmon leap is to learn how to fall. His shoulders took the impact and he twisted as he landed, knees drawn up, heels driving downward, spine rigid, lifting him to his feet again.

A second later, he heard a scream as the first rock thrower died at the hands of the mob, and then another terrified shriek as the second rock thrower came flying headfirst through the crossbars and landed at the horse’s feet. The maddened animal and Merlin were in full accord. The rage of one and despair and frustration of the other were ready to spend themselves on any target, and the prone man was the closest target. The horse reared and the iron-shod hooves came driving down. As with the dog, a spray of blood and splinters of bone flew into the air. Enraged and completely out of control, Merlin’s control or any other’s, the stallion reared again and again, trampling the shattered carcass before him into an almost unrecognizable lump of blood, meat, and scattered, brighter-red fragments of bone.

Uther had time to retreat to the other side of the corral, get his breath, and allow his head to clear. Victory was within his reach. For the first time in his dangerous journey, he sensed he’d won.

The stallion’s fury was turning to exhaustion, and the sorcerer’s grip on the animal’s mind was slipping. The horse stood blowing like a bellows, his satiny coat covered with foam, legs trembling, staring down at the corpse in front of him.

“Merlin!” Uther commanded. “Speak to me. You boasted you knew how to win this engagement between myself and the dread Lord of the Other World, King Bade of Anwin. You boasted you knew how to get him to release my son.”

“I lied!” the sorcerer sneered at his opponent.

Uther began walking toward the exhausted animal.

“Beware, sorcerer. I am the king, King of the Living, the yet unborn and the dead. I command you! Speak or I will banish you from the beast’s mind to wander forever, to hang from the tree where dangle the heads of traitors and the foresworn rejected by both paradise and Gahanna, where Dis Pater rules. Leaving your soul caught between worlds in eternal misery, loneliness, and despair.”

The horse lifted his forefeet and let go a cry of sorrow so profound that Uther heard a gasp of amazement from the spectators surrounding the corral. They seemed surprised that an animal could make such a sound.

“Answer me, consular lost in darkness, lest you spend eternity fleeing to escape my curse!” Uther reached the horse, twined one hand in his mane, and vaulted up to his back. “Answer me,” he whispered, “and I will set you free.”

“Truly, I do not know. The answer is couched in the form of a riddle. But I will speak what wisdom I have garnered as I searched the omens. The madness that troubles my mind is a torment. I would give my life to be set free.” For the first time there was a plaintive note in the sorcerer’s voice.

“A fair exchange. Tell me what you know,” Uther said. “And you have my word, I will set you free.”

A strange sense of his own power shook him, and the crowd was silent as he urged the weary stallion into a cooling walk around the corral.

“The sword,” the sorcerer said, “is in the stone, and she must bring Arthur the sword that is in the stone. He must lie with the Flower Bride of England and she must bring him to the sword that is in the stone. When he holds the sword in one hand and the cup in the other, he will be king in both worlds. That is all I know. All I have ever been able to learn.”

“And so, sorrowful spirit, be gone,” Uther cried aloud. “Be—gone!”