The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) (25 page)

“She hasn’t moved,” said Rufus.  “She’s abandoned the field to Arthur, and Cornwall, too.  It’s over.  Arthur’s duke.  You plodding Cornishmen, go home!”

The four hundred shouted, “Hold!  Give her a fair wait!”

“There’s too much wrong here,” I said to Arthur.

I shouted my battle cry and drove anvil-cutting Urien through the dead girl’s neck, flicking away her head.

No blood.  No trumpets.  And no miracles, Christian or Pagan.

Arthur pronged the head on the tip of his sword and held it eye-level, looking at the girl’s open black eyes, the sun-glow still in her cheeks.

“Is this your Goliath?” he shouted at the Cornishmen in self-disgust.  “You cowards, what have you made me do?”

The dead girl’s head spat in his face.

She said, “Welcome, Prince, to Hell!”

“Better speeching!” cried the crowd.

Arthur shouted and flung away the head.  It tumbled and connected with the bloodless corpse.

“Fool!” I shouted, “it’s an old magician’s trick!”

I jumped on the corpse boots-first and raised Urien to stab off its head once again.  But the dead girl’s arms vined around my legs, entangling and shackling them, arms winding up my body to reach hands for my throat.

I stabbed the corpse again and again, gouts of blood and trumpets’ cry, each sword-wound sprouting another eye, another tangling arm, more lips shouting obscene insults, dozens of hands crushing my throat.

Arthur beside me hacked at the corpse and at the arms running out to tackle him, each cut causing new arms, eyes, ears, mouths, legs to grow from the wounds he made.

Around and above us, four hundred Cornishmen jeered and cheered.

Rufus led his mercenaries charging downslope in wedge formation, butting aside the Cornishmen.  They flailed against the monster girl, hacking off arms and legs and making dozens more grow, until the girl-monster thrashed like a nest of writhing snakes and flung the Romans out of the Shell.

The snaky girl rose up to her full gigantic height, crushing beneath her Arthur and me.  I felt my face blacken in early death.  Arthur shouted to be heard through the dying that was stuffing my ears with my heart’s last poundings, “Join swords, Merlin!  Scissor the swords!  Make the Sign of the Cross!”

Arthur put his blade across mine.  We scissored off a dozen arms murdering me, the cut limbs falling away hissing and withering to white dust.

I, gagging for air, scrambled back from more arms reaching for me.  But no new ones grew from the scissor wounds.

“Again!” cried Arthur.

We scissored off arms and legs, cutting off fresh ears and noses, stabbing out new eyes.  Until the ground around us was like a snowfall of white dust, knee-deep, to slog through.

We reduced the monster to her original form and pinned her to the ground between our scissored blades.

She cried, “Duke Civica Cerealis, save my life!”

Arthur and I looked up at Civica for the sign of the waggling thumb.

“Extraordinary!” Civica cried.  “She’s torn apart a dozen of the greatest fighters in Cornwall but not you two trembling children!”

“She’s Medusa!” I said, sweating and shaking with battle-rage and fright.

“Too hideous to leave alive in Britain!” said Arthur.

Civica said, “If you think you’ve solved her puzzle, do what you will.  Let’s see what happens next.”

“I can tell you what will happen, Duke,” cried the girl.  “I’ll chase you through Annwn forever!”

“Kill her now, if you can,” Civica said, “before I hear more curses.  I carry enough already to crush any ordinary man’s soul.”

The beautiful monster simpered up at me and at Arthur, raising her two arms toward us, saying, “Love me!”

“Cut!” said Arthur.

“Cut!” said I.

We scissored her in half.  Blood sheeted from the body, flinging us into the drifts of white dust.  The trumpets’ cries were ghastly and ear-piercing.

The corpse flashed all over white and burst into a shower of dust.

We staggered to our feet, on guard against the drifting dust.  The four hundred Cornishmen squatted stunned on their rocks.

Civica came down into the Shell and said to us, “You’re the grandest idiots in the world!”

“We killed your Medusa, fool,” said Arthur, banging his sword on his shattered armor.

I said, “Name any other who survived her and I’ll kill him now, half dead as I am, and damn him and you both.”

“But I told you how to beat her, Prince and Princess,” said Civica.  “Do you think me an ass who wants a dead Queen Igerne or a beast like Princess Morgause to hold Cornwall?  I want Arthur duke here!”

I, still trembling with rage, cried, “How did you tell us to beat her?”

“I called it a love-match, didn’t I?”

“That was your clue?” said Arthur.

“How do you think
I
beat her?” said Civica.  “She was my vassal, not my pet.  My hound, not my falcon.  I kept her by loving her.”

I said, “Had Arthur loved her, we wouldn’t have had to fight her?”

“A kiss,” said Civica.  “A mere kiss!  That’s all it took.  Now look,” – he kicked up white dust – “where am I to find another monster like that to defend my holdings?”

“You don’t need monsters,” I said, still angry, but angry with myself for misunderstanding this simpleminded Cornishman’s simpleminded humor.  “You have Duke Arthur.”

“A kiss?  To kiss Medusa?” said Arthur, stunned at the hideous prospect.

“One or as many kisses as you chose,” said Civica.  “She had plenty from me.  That kept her the charming creature you first met.  More than plenty – every hour she needed my kisses.”

“Or she transformed into a beast?”

“I’ll miss her, despite everything,” said Civica.  “She was better company than my three wives.”

“You’re a Christian and you’ve three wives?” said Arthur.

“Here and there, but only one is a Christian, so it’s all right.”

Civica threw out his arms to Arthur.  “Let me kiss you, Lord Duke of Cornwall!”  He kissed Arthur on the mouth.

The four hundred cheered.  Each of them came down to kiss Duke Arthur and salute Princess Merlin.

They put Arthur on Civica’s gilt throne and clapped on his head the Cornish crown.

Arthur said, “Never doubt me.  I’ll repay each of you in kind the loyalty you give me.”

“Excellent speech!” said Civica, raising his hands for the four hundred to cheer again.  “I’m your vassal, Arthur, if you make me your knight and reconfirm me in all my lands and holdings.”

“I make you my First Lieutenant in Cornwall.”  He gave Civica a ring from his hand.

Civica held it up for more cheers.

“A sweet gesture, I’m sure” – Civica tested the quality of the gold between his teeth, nodded approval and raised another cheer – “but have you any drinkables with you?”

Rufus sent his mercenaries to the pack animals, many of the four hundred following shouting for Raetian wine rather than Cornish sour ale.

Left around Arthur, Rufus, and me were Civica and a score of Cornish chieftains.  “Speaking for us all,” said Civica, “a distribution of gold rings would be well-received.”

“I’ll find rings,” Rufus said.  He went to the pack train.

“Good riddance to Rome,” said Civica, watching Rufus go.

Civica kneeled before Arthur, put Arthur’s boot on his forehead, and shouted, “Exchange soul-names with me, Lord Duke, and I’m your comrade in this life and all others!”

Civica rubbed mud on his face and cried, “Wash the Roman from me.  Rename me the name I couldn’t use in this Roman life.  Reclaim me for Britain!”

Civica threw out his arms and fell at Arthur’s feet as though crucified.

“What do I do with this lunatic?” Arthur said to me.

“Do whatever he wants,” I said.  “He has four hundred friends.”

Arthur drove his sword into the ground by Civica’s face.  Civica clutched the blade and kissed it.

“You’re my man,” Arthur said, “and I’m your lord.  Not Satan, Pluto or Ahriman can take one without the other.  Whisper your true name.”

Bedwyr!

“You are Sir Bedivere,” cried Arthur.

The chieftains shouted a fresh cheer and mixed earth, spit, and wine to muddy their faces.  They kissed Arthur’s sword until it ran with muddy slobber.  He christened each of them with the antique names they preferred, rechristening some several times over as they, in their drunken happiness, re-chose names or forgot those they had chosen.

He baptized them all into an age that had existed before Great Caesar’s Invasion, when blue Britons ran naked into battle and their queens slew Roman emperors to do them the favor of making them into Roman gods.

Arthur baptized them all into a new age that shook off the misery of slavery, abandonment, loss, and failure.  A new age in which they all might be heroes.

They loved him for it and cheered Arthur until they fell down drunk and senseless.

* * *

Night.  Bonfires.  Meat sizzling.  Songs and tales.  Shadows shifted and drunken warriors shielded off invisible giants, howling to Duke Arthur for invisible trinkets in reward.  Bedivere, squatting by Arthur on the rock throne, rested his one arm on Arthur’s knee and said, “What now, Duke?”

“With this throng,” said Arthur, toasting his new army with a helmet full of wine, “I could take any castle in the Island!”

“Name it.  We’ll take it for you.”

“Orkney Castle.  My son’s there.”

“That’s at the other end of the world,” said Bedivere.  “Of no interest to Cornishmen.  Crave a fortress in Cornwall.  Tell me you want Tintagel Castle and the brawl we make will fill a page of glory in the chronicles of your new age!”

Bedivere drank from Arthur’s helmet.

“Besides, you’re lord duke only of that part of Cornwall into which you’ve stuck your sword.  You have to conquer all the rest of it, all those dukes and duchesses out there” – Bedivere gestured into the darkness beyond the glow of the campfire – “have to be hammered down or you’ll have no peace from them, and no army to march on Orkney.”

“Arthur has to crush them all?” I said, at last understanding the snickering melancholy with which Igerne and Gurthrygen had agreed to give the duchy to Arthur.

“Does each have an ogre for its champion?” said Arthur, dread in his voice.

“Some do.  Some have just little ogres.  I’ve heard one on the Western Sea owns a dragon, but I don’t believe it.  I’ve never seen an elf or fairy, let alone a dragon.”

Rufus said to Arthur, “Send me ahead with my Romans and a bagful of coins.  We’ll cut you a highway through Cornwall to carry any army you can make.”

“A confident man,” said Bedivere of Rufus.  “Yes, send him and his Roman arrogance ahead of us, Duke.  If he can’t buy Cornwall for you, he and your enemies can exterminate one another, which is just as good.”

“I’d kill you if Arthur didn’t need you,” Rufus said to Bedivere.

Bedivere fired off a fart.

“Which road west for you, Arthur?” said Rufus.  “I’ll meet you there with all of Cornwall bought and paid for.  Give me the key to the treasure box.”

Great gods, what a gamble!  But what could we do?

A cold, wet dawn surprised us as it spread over the Shell and the Cornish warriors sprawled in drunken sleep.  Rufus, with Arthur’s treasure key and his mercenaries, climbed up to the ridge to prepare their horses.

Arthur shouted up to them, “Farewell!” as he pissed on a bush.  His shivering fingers fumbled with his trouser ties.  “Everyone says the Saxons are such imbeciles they can’t learn the art of trouser-wearing but the morning after a drunk I forgive them!”

I retied Arthur’s laces.  Mothers do that.

The sun came fully up, popping out of the trees like a hawk on patrol.

Arthur and I watched Rufus and his mercenaries trot west with all the money Arthur had, to buy Cornwall.  We watched them a long while, until they faded into the horizon, watching Camelot ride away with them.

Nine months of hard fighting and slippery bribery later, or a bit longer as royal princes take longer to gestate, Duke Arthur with his war-chipped greatsword stood siege beneath the walls of Tintagel Castle, the last great fortress he had to capture to own all of Cornwall.

Night.  Sea clapped loud on the beach.  Winter snow like thrown ice smacked our faces.  Arthur shouted up through torch smoke to the defenders on the castle ramparts, “Yield to your lord or I’ll feed your guts to the sharks!”

Warriors on the wall laughed down at him and pissed on him.

A voice shouted back, “We’ll boil your guts for our pigs’ feed!”

I saw them heave a steaming bucket over the wall.  I grabbed Arthur by his armor straps and hauled him out of the boggy moat that Rufus’ Romans had drained.  Boiling oil splashed down where Arthur had stood, sizzling and popping as it splattered on the icy mud, making a stink like roast swamp.

Arthur, exhausted, fell on his rump in the mud, sword in one hand, his ducal crown in the other.  I held the screaming shield over him for arrow-protection.  We had smoke-smeared faces, both of us stiff with half-healed battle wounds, our armor dented and rain-rusted from nine months of combat.  We were hungry, thirsty, cold, wet, and hadn’t slept since the last full Moon, whenever that was.

“God, but war is awful,” Arthur said, sprawling in the mud, slapping away the icy slush hitting his face.  “Is this truly the only life for heroes?”

“No, just for half-made heroes like you.”  I slapped him with Urien.  “Get up and back to work, Arthur.  Lead on!”

“When I’m a hero, Mother, can I quit the slaughter?”

One-armed Bedivere shoved out of the warriors he was cheering as they flung crap buckets over the castle walls.  “On your feet, Arthur, don’t let your army see you like this.  You’ve Uther’s blood in your veins – show it.”

“Whatever my father did, I’ll double!” said Arthur, using his sword to stagger to his feet.  He clapped his crown on his conical helmet.  “Which way to the fight?” he said, dazed.

I spun him around toward the castle.  He staggered that way, dragging his sword and shield.

Bedivere slapped Arthur’s breastplate and nearly knocked him down.  “Shake it off, boy, the sickness and wounds, too.  Be the Arthur we want.  Take this little piss-ant castle.  Kill all those who infest it.  Settle your throne in their blood.  Let’s get on to Orkney and the real fighting for your son!”

The thought of stealing Mordred energized Arthur.  He wiped mud and ice from his face.  Spat at the castle.  Raised his greatsword over his head like a flag.  Shouted to his troops, “Once more, Cornwall!  To the gate!”

Arthur ran down into the ice-bog moat, his cheering army surging after him.

Bedivere and I shielded off arrows and boiling oil meant for Arthur.  We joined him in battering down the castle gate.  We catapulted Greek fire over the walls.  I used anvil-cutting Urien to hack blocks of stone out the castle walls and whole sections of rampart tumbled down into the muddy moat.

The army cheered again as Urien hacked open the gate locks and Arthur and I broke into the castle.  We cut our way into the palace of the resident knight-captain.  We found her tattered and smoke-stained, sitting on a chair surrounded by her lifeguards.  She rattled her gold chain of office in one hand and stared moodily at her broken greatsword in the other.

“I’m Arthur!” Arthur shouted.  “I have the castle.  Name yourself.  Join me or die.”

“No need to shout.  I can hear you.  I’m Decima.  I hold this fortress for Igerne and Morgause after her.”

“Igerne is dying,” said Arthur.  “Morgause fled to Orkney.”

“Oh, well, the news never gets to me quick enough,” said Decima.  “This is the end of the world out here.”

Decima shoved out of her ring of lifeguards.  “I’m a citizen of Rome.  Before I bend my neck to a barbarian like you, I’ll cut it myself.”

She raised her broken sword, ran the last edge across her throat and fell down spewing blood, choking and dying.

“Good knight,” said Rufus.  He toed the head over so he could read the face.  “Why, this was my wife’s most distant cousin.  May I take a lock of hair for her remembrance?”

Rufus scalped the dead woman.

“Is that a ‘lock?’” said Bedivere.

“From the bitch who bedded my wife before me on our wedding day.”

“What about them?”  I turned Urien toward the lifeguards with their swords drawn and shields up.

“Are you Romans or Cornishmen?” Arthur said to them, so battle-weary he was leaning on his sword.

“More Cornish than that sniveling half-breed who calls himself the new lord duke of Cornwall!” cried a warrior.  He spat over his shield at Arthur.

“Who else spits on his duke?” said Arthur.

All the warriors, men and women, spat on him. Spitting seemed half of Cornish communication.

Bedivere said, “Let’s kill them all.”

“I’m weary of slaughter,” said Arthur.

To the lifeguards, he said, “Listen to me.  I’m the Pendragon prince made in this castle.  I killed Bedivere’s Medusa and he’s with me.  I conquered every city and fortress in Cornwall and they’re all with me.  Join me.  I need good fighters for the next war I must make.  I can pay.”

“We’ve heard that much news, Arthur Liar,” said a warrior shoving out of the lifeguard ring.

He said, “Your ‘conquests’ were bought, your army is bought, and you’ve bastard Romans at your council table.  You’re no more our true prince than dead Decima the Roman.”

The warrior hitched up his shield.  “But let me measure your meat and bone with my gauge here.”

The warrior swung his sword and shattered Arthur’s shield.

Arthur staggered from the blow.

Bedivere and I ran in to slaughter the warrior.

Arthur shouted, “Leave him to me!”

He shrugged off the wreckage of his shield, threw off his helmet and crown, took his greatsword in both hands, and put himself on guard.

“Name your name so your lord duke can carve it in your face.”

“A gaudy-mouthed little boy,” said the warrior, throwing aside his own shield and helmet and taking his greatsword in both hands.

“In your death, Arthur, when all secrets come clear, you’ll know my true name.  In stinking Latin, I’m Mansuetas.  Come to me and be killed, Little Duke.”

Decima’s lifeguards laughed and jeered.

Arthur attacked, his sword chipping off more bits as it clattered on Mansuetas’ blade.

With each crossing and recrossing of blades, with each mailed fist raked across a head, each club-blow in the breastplate, the wearied Arthur seemed to take new strength and power, sucking out of Mansuetas the energy the knight used in driving in his own blows and hacks.

At last Mansuetas, bruised and cut, battered half-conscious, drained to staggering weakness, fell to his knees and Arthur could have off his head.

The lifeguards attacked.

Arthur, filling with the energy of his enemies, fought the lifeguards in pairs, triplets, quartets, all twenty at once.  Parrying and kicking, clubbing, flinging back at them the knives they threw at him.  Sucking out of them their energy and power.  Until he had smashed all their shields, broken all their swords and clubs, and beaten them into reeling exhaustion.  They fell to their knees and pleaded to have their heads cut off rather than to be flung over the walls in a tub of boiling oil.

Arthur threw down his wrecked greatsword, the blade sparking and clattering on the stone floor.  He dropped wearily into the chair that had been Decima’s.

“By right of blood and conquest, I am captain of this castle and Lord Duke of Cornwall,” Arthur said to the warriors on their knees.  “Say my name, any who would serve me and stay alive.”

Mansuetas on his knees handed his sword to Arthur.  “Decima was a Roman but she commanded me.  Take my head but not my honor, Arthur.  Kill me.”

Bedivere said to Arthur, “Surely a prince who can beat twenty men in single combat can spare the life of this man of honor!”

“Don’t be a fool, One Arm,” I said.  “I’ll happily cut his throat for you, Arthur.”

Arthur lay the sword on the man’s shoulder.  “I kill Mansuetas,” he said, whacking the blade through the man’s neck, “by birthing
Cei!
”

“‘Kay?’” cried Mansuetas, clapping hands to his throat.  The steel had gone through him and left no cut.

“Great Jesu!” shouted Bedivere.

I said, “What’ve you done, Prince?”

“How do you know my true name?” cried Kay.

“I heard it when I spoke it,” Arthur said.

“You named me in my soul-name.  I was
Cei
to my mother.  Only she and I know the word.  You’ve made me your blood, Prince, and mine yours.”

Kay clutched and kissed Arthur.

What had happened here?  Kay was alive with his throat cut.  Arthur was a saint or a demon.  Or a better trickster than I’d trained him to be.  Was this the Arthur I had made?

Rufus whispered to me, “I’ve seen a thousand magician’s tricks but never one as convincing as that.  How did he do it, Lady?”

Yes, how did he do it?

* * *

Three months later.  Spring.  A spring afternoon of shifting sun and cloud, passing rain, heat, steam in the forest depths.  Arthur and I sprawled in ragged hunting clothes beneath a tree to drowse.  Bedivere and Kay lounged in the saddles of their horses, listening for game.  They spurred away after a roebuck, Kay nocking an arrow in his bowstring and Bedivere raising a spear.  Rufus with his Romans was at Isca or Tintagel or points between, collecting Arthur’s first tax as lord of Cornwall.  The army – grown now to nearly 6,000 men and women, almost a legion – was fed and rested, re-armed, re-armored, and ready to fight again.

A herald rode up, her helmet thrown back on her head, streaming sweat and a tangle of red hair.  I knew her knife-scarred cheek but not her name.  Her face was smeared with mud and campfire smoke.  She was middle-aged, twenty-five, and too old for a herald’s hard-riding chores.  But she knew all the geography of the Island and could speak all its civilized languages.

“Give me water,” she said, panting with exhaustion.

She jumped off her horse and landed on both feet, shield on one arm, helmet slung from the other.  I handed her the waterskin.

The herald drank and said, “I read your arms, Lady Merlin,” – she gestured toward my checkered shield slung from my grazing horse – “so tell me where to find your master, Duke Arthur.”

“I’m Arthur,” Arthur said, slumped against a tree.

The herald was surprised.  “Champion of Cornwall and just past seventeen?”

“Sobeit.”

“I’ve an urgent message from the king.”

“Recite it,” said Arthur.

“‘Gurthrygen, King-Emperor of the Britons, son of Uther Pendragon, to his brother, Arthur, Lord Duke of Cornwall,
et cetera, et cetera
’ – pardon the Latin shortcuts but the king is a wordy bastard.”

“Get on with your shortcuts,” said Arthur.

“‘My love to you,
et cetera
, and all the related formalities,
et cetera
’ – in many ways, ‘
et cetera
’ is the king’s favorite unspoken Latin.”

“So it hears,” I said, laughing at this herald’s endless urgent message.

“After the last ‘
et cetera
’ the king resumes with ‘I say in the plainest sorrow that the Queen Igerne, your mother and my stepmother-wife, is dead.’”

Arthur jumped up.  “Tell us the rest of it, quick!”

“‘I call you back to me with your army to spearhead a great attack on the Saxons before they know the strategic loss I’ve suffered in the death of the Queen.  For all the love you bear me, or should, and the unity of our blood from Uther, I call on you…’”

Arthur ran to his horse, leaped on, and hauled up shield and spear.

“Where’s the king?” he shouted at the herald.

“At Londinium when I left him,” she said.

Arthur blew his calling horn.  A crash and clatter in the forest and the outrush of lifeguards.  A replying horn halloo from Kay and Bedivere.

He shouted to me, “Go fetch the army!”

“Fetch the army?  It’ll take a week to sober them for the saddle!”

“In a week we’ll parade through Ludd-town beating our drums with Saxons bones.  Bring the army to follow my track.”

Arthur wheeled his horse and galloped northeast.

The herald gawked after him, saying, “Is he going to gallop across Cornwall?”

“All the way to Londinium,” I said.

“Then that’s a Pegasus he rides.  At least I’ve met one real champion in Cornwall.  Too bad he’s just a horse.”

The herald squatted by the campfire and said, “Give me to eat before we fall upon the Saxons and murder them all behind their steel shields.”