Arthur had his steed under control by then. He stared at me, wide-eyed.
“You…” He glanced at the arrow embedded in the ground at his mount’s hooves and then at the barbarians’ earthen parapet, gauging the distance.
“We
should call you Orion Strong-Arm,” Arthur said, clear astonishment in his voice.
I shrugged modestly, trotted to the first spear and picked it up, then followed Arthur back to our camp, safely out of bow range from the barbarian entrenchment.
As the sun dipped westward, throwing long shadows through the forest, Arthur called his most senior knights together at his cook fire. Footmen had scouted
through the woods on either side of the road. Their reports were not encouraging. There were hundreds of Angles behind the entrenchment and more coming up the road from the coast.
“We could go around it,” Arthur suggested, “through the forest, and attack them from the flanks.”
Sir Bors pointed out, “Those woods are too thick for horses. We’d have to attack them on foot.”
“Their numbers would
overwhelm us,” said Sir Kay, gloomily.
“That young hothead Lancelot wants to charge them straight on,” Bors complained.
“On foot?” Kay looked aghast.
Around and around the discussion went, while the sun set and a deep moonless dark fell over the woods. I heard an owl hoot, and a moaning wind began tossing the leafy branches of the trees. It was easy to understand how these people could believe
deep forests such as this to be haunted.
The conference broke up with nothing decided. Arthur walked slowly away from the campfire. I followed him at a respectful distance.
“Orion,” he called to me without turning around.
I came up to his side.
“I must decide, Orion. We must find a way to beat these barbarians. My mission is to drive them out of Britain. We can’t retreat and leave them here
unharmed.”
“Then we must fight them,” I said.
“On foot? They’ll slaughter us.”
We were standing in the middle of the paved road, looking up toward the enemy’s position. They had lit big bonfires on either end of their earthwork, so sneaking across the ditch and up the rampart for a surprise attack was out of the question.
“Let me scout their position,” I suggested. “Perhaps I can find a weakness
that the footmen overlooked.”
Bleakly, he nodded. Then he murmured, “I wish Merlin were here. He’d know what to do.”
Perhaps, I thought. Or perhaps Merlin would lead you on to your death.
6
I slipped into the woods, armed with nothing but a sword and the dagger that Odysseos had given me at Troy, strapped to my thigh. The underbrush was thick, the going slow and difficult. It would be impossible
to sneak up on the barbarians in silence.
Unless … I crouched in the deepest shadows of the bushes and squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to another vantage point. If Aten and his so-called Creators can move across space and time at their whim, why can’t I?
It was useless. No matter how I strained, no matter how hard I concentrated, I did not budge from my spot in the underbrush. If only
Anya were near enough to contact, I thought. She could help me.
“I will help you, my darling Orion,” her silvery voice whispered.
“Anya!”
“I am far away, far distant in time and space,” she told me, her voice so faint I wondered if I were imagining it. “I cannot maintain contact for very long, beloved.”
Just to hear her voice was more joy than I had known in ages.
“Close your eyes, Orion,”
she commanded gently. “Close your eyes and see.”
I pressed my eyes shut once again. And suddenly I was high above the forest, looking down as a hawk would, as an eagle soaring among the clouds. I saw the thin straight line of the Roman road, the barbarians’ ditch with Arthur’s camp on one side of it and the enemy’s on the other. Higher and higher I rose. There were three more trenches dug across
the road, with several miles’ distance between each one. The final trench was just before the Angles’ village on the coast.
Barbarians they might be, but they understood the value of a defense in depth. Arthur and his knights might fight their way past one of those barriers, perhaps even two of them. But at what cost? How many knights would Arthur have left after two such assaults? How many footmen
would remain loyal to him after such bloodlettings?
I opened my eyes and was back in the underbrush.
“Anya, what can I do?” I asked, hardly voicing the words.
There was no answer. Anya was gone. She had given me all the help she could; now the contact between us was broken. Instead I heard in my mind the scornful laughter of Aten, telling me without words that Arthur’s quest to drive the barbarians
out of Britain was doomed to dismal failure.
7
But Arthur did not think so. He listened grimly as I described the series of fortifications that the barbarians had dug along the road leading to the Angles’ coastal base. When he asked how I could have seen so much in a single night, I told him that the Lady of the Lake showed it to me. That was not far from the truth.
The two of us walked alone
through the deep woods that morning. The rest of Arthur’s army lolled in camp, content to rest for the day. The Angles were not resting, though; they were digging, deepening their entrenchments, strengthening their defenses.
After my report Arthur walked slowly through the woods for what seemed like hours, silent, thinking, weighing the possibilities. It was cool in the deep shadows of the forest.
The trees formed an almost continuous green canopy high above us, making it difficult to tell how far the sun had moved. The underbrush was so thick that we had to walk slowly. Horsemen could never charge through here.
At length, Arthur asked me, “Where are their fighting men, Orion?”
I blinked, trying to remember what I had seen. “There were many more campfires at this first barrier than at
any of the others—except for the last one, near their village.”
He nodded. “Most of their fighting men are here, then, ready to face us. If we break through their defenses, they will fall back along the road to the next barrier.”
“That makes sense. The other trenches are held only weakly at present. The people digging near their village must be old men, boys, perhaps even women.”
“Their defenses
are of no use if they have no warriors to man them,” Arthur said.
I looked at his youthful face with new respect. He understood the fundamental truth of war: destroy the enemy’s army.
“It will be a costly battle, my lord,” I warned. “It could be a Pyrrhic victory.”
His brows rose questioningly.
“Pyrrhus was a Greek king who fought the Roman republic in southern Italy. He won many battles,
but always his own casualties were enormous. Once, when an aide congratulated him on beating the Romans again, he said, ‘Another victory like this one and I’ll have no army left.’”
Arthur smiled. “Yes, I see. Still, it must be done.”
I agreed. “If we must attack them, then it must be in a manner that prevents them from retreating to their next fortification.”
“That’s the problem. How can we
accomplish that?”
I remembered another battle, at a place called Cannae. I had served the doomed Hannibal in that era.
8
It took the rest of the day to get the knights to agree to the plan that Arthur and I had hatched.
Bors was dead set against the plan, of course. “Divide your forces? Depend on the footmen? It’s insane!”
Gawain was doubtful. “How can we get through those woods? They’re
impassable.”
Patiently, Arthur said, “You walk your horse through the underbrush. It can be done.”
“Walk?” Gawain looked shocked. “I’m a knight, not a footman.”
Arthur laughed. “You’ll fight on horseback, never fear.”
Once again I marveled that these impulsive, individualistic Celtic knights could agree on anything. Dux Bellorum was Arthur’s title, but it meant nothing by itself. None of the
knights felt the slightest compulsion to accept authority or follow orders that he did not like. Arthur had to win them over to his view; he could not command them, he had to persuade them. Even the footmen could melt away, leaving the army and trudging on back to their farmsteads or villages whenever they decided to.
Lancelot was the only one who agreed without argument. He was avid for battle.
“Let me be in the forefront of the attack!” he pleaded. “On foot or ahorse, I’ll make those barbarians feel the sharpness of my sword!”
In truth, it was Lancelot who won Arthur’s argument for him. He was so eager, so willing to plunge into battle, that he shamed Gawain and the older men into a sullen agreement.
It was late in the day by the time all the knights, one by one, gave the grudging
nod to Arthur’s plan.
“Very well, then,” said Arthur at last. “We spend this night preparing for an attack at dawn.”
One by one, he clasped each of them by the shoulders, knowing that they might never see each other again. The last one he embraced was young Lancelot.
“Please let me lead the frontal assault,” Lancelot begged.
“That’s the most dangerous job,” Arthur said gently. “There’s a very
good chance that you’ll be killed.”
“But it brings the most glory! What does it matter if I’m killed? My deeds will live forever!”
Achilles had felt that way, I remembered. Until an arrow crippled him.
Arthur looked the youth in the eye. “Leading the frontal assault is my task, my responsibility.”
Before the crestfallen Lancelot could reply, he added, “But you can be at my right hand, my friend.”
I thought Lancelot would explode with joy.
9
All that night the men deployed, most of the knights and all of the footmen moving off into the dark, scary forest as quietly as they could. The one brown-robed friar we had with us, a spindly, lean-faced priest named Samson, blessed kneeling men until his arm grew stiff with fatigue. Others knelt in the underbrush and prayed silently before they
set off. Many of the knights held their longswords before them as they prayed, the sword’s hilt serving as a makeshift crucifix for them. A strange sort of symbol for the Prince of Peace, I thought. But these were savage times, and these men were fighting for their homes and families.
So are the barbarians, said a voice in my mind. They have made their homes here in Britain.
I tried to get some
sleep as I stretched out on the mossy ground near the dying embers of a campfire. Much of Arthur’s plan—my plan, really—depended on the knights and footmen being in their proper places when the sun came up. Would they be in place?
An owl hooted somewhere in the woods. The totem of Athena, I recalled from another life, although in many cultures the owl was seen as a symbol of death. The night
was still, hardly a breeze. A wolf snarled out there in the darkness. Fireflies danced to and fro in the underbrush. Even though I knew better, I almost thought the woods to be haunted, the habitat of elves and fairies and darker, more dangerous spirits.
I drifted off to sleep, only to find myself suspended in a featureless golden glow, floating as if in a weightless limbo.
“The end is near
for Arthur,” said Aten’s haughty voice.
I turned, spun around weightlessly, but could see nothing except the glowing golden radiance that surrounded me.
“Show yourself,” I said.
“Giving commands to your Creator?” He laughed. “Really, Orion, I ought to let you die with Arthur.”
“Neither of us will die,” I said.
“Arthur will. And once he does, your usefulness in this placetime comes to an end.”
“I won’t murder him for you.”
Aten’s golden form took shape out of the glowing mist. Now he wore a formfitting uniform of golden mesh.
“You won’t have to assassinate Arthur,” said Aten. “Young Lancelot will do your job for you.”
“Lancelot?” I couldn’t believe it. “He’d never kill Arthur. He adores the ground Arthur walks on.”
“Yes, of course he does. And to show how much he adores Arthur he
will be more daring than any knight. He will charge against the barbarians’ spears, all courage and no fear. And Arthur will have to rush in beside him, won’t he? Arthur would never stand back and watch the young hothead get himself killed in his foolish recklessness.”
I saw it in my mind’s eye: Lancelot charging blindly, Arthur rushing in to protect him, the barbarians swarming around them.
“Not while I live,” I muttered. “As long as I have breath in me, I will protect Arthur.”
Aten smirked. “Then you’ll have to die, too.”
I wanted to reach out and throttle him, but before I could lift a finger I found myself back in Arthur’s camp in the gray misty light of early dawn. Already I could hear the woodsmen’s axes chunking into thick-boled trees.
10
The tree trunks were rough and heavy.
There was no time to split them or smooth them off. The barbarians must have heard the trees being felled and were wondering what we were up to; it was far too much chopping to be simply for firewood.
Arthur had kept only two dozen knights for this frontal assault on the entrenchment. The others were sifting through the woods, hoping to cut off the enemy’s retreat.
If the enemy retreated. A
dozen knights plus their squires and a few teenaged footmen was hardly an overwhelming force to pit against the entrenched Angles.
I was gripping one side of a massive tree trunk as we lugged it straight up the road toward the ditch and embankment behind it. I could see barbarian warriors watching us, their horned helmets bobbing up and down behind their earthwork. They must be laughing, I thought,
as I sweated with the heavy load. It was too heavy for us to run with it. We trudged up the road, our arms feeling as if they would be pulled out of their sockets by the weight of the trunk.
The knights walked beside us, protecting us a little with their shields. No one said a word. Not even the birds or mammals of the woods made a sound. All I could hear was the steady labored trudging of our
boots and the heaving, weary grunts from the squires and footmen toting the tree trunk.