“Kay’s too sick to see anybody,” said the guard, “and Gawain’s over in Brittany seeking vengeance for his brother’s killing.”
My head spinning, I blurted, “How long has Arthur been High King?”
The guard’s suspicious face went even tighter. “How long…? How should I know? He’s been High King as long as I can remember. What of it?”
“I was his squire when he was crowned,” I
tried to explain. “Send word to him. Tell him that Orion has returned.”
Clearly distrustful, the guard shook his head. “So I’m supposed to go up to the High King and tell him his squire’s come to see him?”
Starting to feel desperate, I said, “Is Lancelot here? He’ll know me.”
All three of the men burst into mocking laughter.
“Sir Lancelot?” said their chief. “With him as your friend you won’t
need any enemies!”
“He’s the one Gawain’s gone after. He killed Gawain’s brother.”
No, I thought. That couldn’t be! Lancelot killed Gawain’s brother? And now Gawain is seeking vengeance on him? What happened to the brotherhood of knights that I had known in the old days, when we fought shoulder to shoulder against the barbarian invaders? What have Arthur’s knights come to?
“I can’t believe
it,” I said.
“Believe it, stranger. And begone with you. The High King has no time for the likes of you.”
I began to grow angry. Arthur’s tent was a scant hundred paces in front of me, yet these three oafs would not let me past them.
Drawing myself up to my full height, I told them, “The High King will be glad to see me. And he’ll be very unhappy with anyone who prevents me from reaching him.”
“How do we know you’re not a spy?” said the younger man-at-arms on the guard’s left.
“Or an assassin?” said the other, on his right.
I could see they were determined to keep me away from Arthur. Protecting him, they thought. How different this camp was from Amesbury fort, or from the easy camaraderie of Arthur’s knights when we fought the length of the land against the Saxons and their barbarian
allies.
I decided to act. Swifter than their eyes could follow, I plucked the spear from the chief guard’s hands. Before he could react, I used the spear as a quarterstaff and clouted his two younger companions, one-two, and down they went.
The older veteran stared at me, stunned. I pointed the spear’s sharp tip at his throat. “Now take me to the High King.”
“He’ll kill me if I try—”
“I’ll
kill you right here and now if you don’t,” I said, my voice cold with fury.
He glanced at his two companions, moaning and stirring faintly on the ground. With real terror in his eyes he turned and led me to Arthur’s tent.
It was a trap, of course. Of sorts.
The amazed guard led me reluctantly to the largest tent in the camp. A pair of guards stood at its entrance, well dressed in clean tunics
bearing the red dragon. Both of them clutched spears, and eyed our approach with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion as I walked behind the disarmed guard, his spear in my hands, pointed at his kidneys.
As we approached, I called to them, “Orion, squire to the High King, has returned from his mission.”
“Better let him in,” muttered my disarmed guard.
The two men at the tent’s entrance glanced
at each other, then the one on the right said, “Go on through, then. But you can’t carry that spear into the High King’s presence.”
With some misgiving, I handed him the spear and stepped through the tent’s entrance.
“Seize him!” yelled the guard who was holding my spear, and a half-dozen men-at-arms stationed just inside the entrance grabbed at me.
I had half expected it. My senses snapping
into overdrive, I saw their hands reaching for me, slowly, almost as if in a dream. I grasped one of them by the wrist and flung him into several of the others, then side-kicked the one standing nearest me solidly in the chest. As he toppled over backward I ducked beneath the reaching arms of the other two and knocked them both down with a rolling block.
Springing to my feet, I saw nine men sprawled
on the carpeting that lined the tent’s floor. But they were scrambling to their feet, drawing swords, leveling spears at me.
“What’s going on here?” a deep, commanding voice shouted.
Turning, I saw it was Arthur, High King of all the Britons.
3
It truly was Arthur, but he was older, much older than when I had seen him at Cadbury castle. His beard grew halfway down his chest, gray tufts streaking
the brown. His face was lined and gaunt, his eyes hard beneath graying brows. Yet his apparel was far richer than anything he had worn when I knew him earlier. A fine robe of dark soft wool was draped across his shoulders. His tunic was trimmed with fur: sable, I thought. His boots of beautifully tooled leather looked brand new: they had never seen a battle or even a hard trek across country.
But those gold-flecked eyes of his widened as he looked at me.
“Orion?” he gasped.
I dropped to one knee. “My lord,” I said, with bowed head.
He rushed to me and raised me to my feet. With some of his old, youthful vigor he demanded, “Where have you been? What happened to you? Why … you haven’t changed a whit! It’s been more than twenty years and you’re still the same!”
Before I could reply
he snapped at the guards. “You ignorant louts! How dare you attack this man? Didn’t he tell you he was my squire, my friend?”
“Y … Your majesty,” the chief guard stammered, “we didn’t know. We thought—”
Arthur dismissed his guards with an angry wave of his hand, then led me deeper into his tent. Serving wenches scampered to bring us wine in golden cups as we sat in finely wrought chairs of mahogany
at a table inlaid with colorful tiles.
“I was told that Gotha the Saxon had murdered you, all those long years ago,” Arthur said.
“He tried, sire,” I replied, “but I escaped.”
“And where have you been these twenty years?”
I hesitated. “On a far journey, sire. But I have returned to serve you, just as I did at Amesbury fort.”
Arthur leaned back in his chair, smiling with memories. “Those were
the days, weren’t they? We beat the Saxons, the Angles, the Jutes … all of them.”
“Indeed we did, sire.”
Then his face clouded and he shook his head. “Yet we could not drive them out of Britain, as I had hoped. Old Gotha united the barbarians and we fought a great battle against them at Badon Hill. We broke their power, but we couldn’t drive them completely out of this island.”
“They live along
the coast,” I murmured, recalling the origins of the shires of Wessex, Sussex, and the rest.
“Yes,” Arthur agreed. “They’ve stopped their raiding. They live peacefully enough now. For more than twenty years Britain has been at peace.”
“Then you’ve achieved your goal, sire.”
“At a price, Orion. A terrible price. Bors was killed in the fighting. My brother Kay lies sick with the wasting illness.
Sir Ector, Peredur, Gareth … all gone.”
I said, “I was told Sir Gawain was away … on a quest.”
Arthur shook his head. “Gawain’s quests used to involve women, every time. I once told him he’d have to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem if he wanted to save his soul. But now…” His voice faded into silence.
“He seeks vengeance against Lancelot?” I found it hard to believe.
“Yes,” Arthur whispered.
“Blood vengeance.”
An uncomfortable silence fell upon us. At last I said, “But twenty years of peace is a great achievement, sire. You’ve accomplished a great deal.”
“Have I?” Arthur’s gray brows knit. “For more than twenty years I’ve given my people peace. They’ve grown prosperous and content, knowing that they are safe in their homes. Fat and happy they are. Forests have been cleared for cultivation,
villages have grown, even the ancient Roman cities have been rebuilt.”
“That’s wonderful, sire.”
“But the curse of the Celts remains. Each petty lord considers himself a king, even though his kingdom is no more than a patch of land. They all build castles now and hire men-at-arms.”
“But they obey the High King, don’t they?”
“When it suits them,” Arthur replied sourly. “When they see some advantage
to themselves in it.”
Suddenly he leaped to his feet, nearly knocking over the table. The serving women cowered in the far corner of the tent.
“Ingrates! Fools!” he thundered. “I bring them twenty years of peace and they pay me with disloyalty! Most of them have refused to join my siege of Mark’s castle here at Tintagel.”
“King Mark rebelled against you?”
“He murdered one of my knights!” Arthur
bellowed. “He stabbed Sir Tristan in the back, drove his traitorous dagger through the heart of a fine and noble knight.”
“But why?”
His expression twisting, Arthur admitted, “Tristan was in bed with Mark’s wife. She said afterward that some witch had given them both a love potion and they couldn’t control themselves. But Mark didn’t wait for explanations; he foully murdered Sir Tristan!”
“And Mark’s wife?”
“He took her back. He accepted her story about the love potion.”
“I see.”
“Mark must be brought to justice,” Arthur insisted. “But the other nobles sit in their castles and refuse to join me. They refuse their High King!”
“There must be—”
“It’s treason,” Arthur said. “Out-and-out treason. And worse. In the north Modred is gathering an army for himself.”
“Modred? Your son?”
Arthur’s expression turned withering. “My bastard son by the witch Morganna, yes. My loving son. He will rebel against me as soon as he thinks his army is strong enough. He knows I’ll never name him as my heir, so he’s determined to seize the High Kingship by force.”
“While you’re here in Cornwall, besieging Tintagel.”
Arthur muttered something too low for me to hear.
“But what of Lancelot?”
I asked again. “He’s loyal to you, isn’t he? He’d be worth a small army all by himself.”
“I told you, Orion, don’t ask about Lancelot.”
I sat there and watched the bitterness etching his face. Arthur returned to his chair and reached for his wine goblet, drained it, then held it up for one of the serving wenches to refill.
“It seems to me, sire,” I began slowly, “as if you could use King Mark
and his men against the rebels that Modred is assembling. Perhaps you could come to an understanding with Mark…”
Arthur raised a dismissive hand. “No, Orion. He murdered Tristan. He must face trial. And punishment.”
I had a sudden idea. “Could it be a trial at arms?”
Arthur nodded. “It could.”
“You could meet Mark on the field of honor, if he would agree to it.”
“He would never agree,” said
Arthur. “Face me? With Excalibur in my hand? He’d shit his pants.”
I blinked at his crudity. “Then perhaps he might agree to face someone else. Someone he wouldn’t fear. A lowly squire, perhaps.”
Understanding dawned on Arthur’s face. But then he shook his head once again. “He could not face anyone lower than a knight. It would be unseemly. He would never agree to it.”
“I suppose not.”
Then
a crafty look came into his eyes that I had never seen on Arthur’s face before. “But I could make you a knight, Orion. I could bring you into the fellowship of the Round Table.”
“Me? A knight? But—”
“Silence, Orion. I am High King. I can do anything I want. And I will make you a knight this very day.”
4
Thus it was that I was knighted.
The procedure was much more ceremonious than it had been
back at the time when Lancelot won his spurs. There was more Christian ritual to it: I had to fast the night before, allowed to ingest nothing more than a few sips of water from sundown onward. As the sun rose the next morning a half-dozen knights—none of whom I knew—roused me from my tent and marched me in procession to the crude wooden hut that served as a chapel for the besieging army.
Summer
it might be, but the air was chill and damp with dew that rose up from the ground like ethereal wraiths. I could see our breaths steaming in the crisp air. The crash of surf against the rocks was accompanied by the sighing of a dank wind that came off the water.
Inside the makeshift chapel stood Arthur, draped in a rich robe trimmed with ermine fur, at the head of the central aisle, in front
of the altar. He was flanked by two priests in clean white robes; a teenaged page stood behind them and slightly off to one side.
I glanced around the chapel, wary for danger. But I saw no one else. Nor could I feel the presence of any of the Creators. If Aten intended to assassinate Arthur, would he do it here? I reached out with my mind, but sensed nothing: none of the Creators was here, not
even Anya. I smiled inwardly to think of the sensation it would cause if she appeared here as the Lady of the Lake.
My escort of knights and I marched up the central aisle, bowed to the High King, and took seats in the front pew. Arthur turned to the carved wooden throne at one side of the altar and sat slowly, stiffly on it. The priests began to say the ritual of the Christian mass.
All through
the mass I strove to make contact with Anya, but it was useless. It was as if I were in a bottle of smooth, impermeable glass. No matter how I tried, I could not contact her. Aten was maintaining his blockade, keeping me from reaching or even contacting her.
Once the mass was finished, the ceremony of knighthood began. Arthur rose slowly, with great dignity, to his feet, and I got up to stand
before him. Like the mass, the ceremony was in Latin; it was basically designed to test if I was worthy of knighthood. I answered all the priests’ question well enough for Arthur at last to unsheathe Excalibur and order me to kneel before him. Once I did, he tapped me on each shoulder with that matchless blade and pronounced:
“Rise, Sir Orion, and welcome to the fellowship of the Round Table.”
One of the priests raised a hand to his lips and murmured, “But, sire, that’s a pagan name! He can’t—”
Arthur froze the man with a scowl. “It is a Roman name, priest. Your High King tells you so.”
The priest’s face reddened and he lapsed into silence.