Arthur turned slightly in his saddle, surveying the ground and the enemy forces.
“They hold the high ground,” he muttered.
Mounted beside him, I nodded agreement. “They’ve been resting while we’ve been marching north to meet them.”
“Modred’s no fool,” said Arthur.
He was wearing an old Roman cuirass over his chain mail. It was gilded, but in the dull morning light it gave no glint of splendor. A pair of squires stood at either of his stirrups, one bearing his shield and helmet, the other clutching a double armful of lances and spears.
The air felt chill. Not a breath of breeze blowing. The fog rose from the frozen ground like spirits of the dead, slowly
writhing.
Sir Percival rode up and nosed his steed between Arthur and me. He looked almost boyish, with golden hair so light that his beard seemed almost invisible. A stylized lion, in bright red, was emblazoned on his tunic.
“Sire, which one is Modred?” he asked.
Arthur pointed. “He in the black tunic, with the boar’s head pennant.”
Percival licked his lips nervously. He was young, just as
young as Lancelot had been all those years ago at Amesbury. But where Lancelot had been eager to fight, afire with enthusiasm, Percival seemed much more circumspect.
“He’s assembled a mighty host, sire. They outnumber us by far.”
“So they do,” said Arthur, almost wistfully. “So they do.”
I said nothing. Arthur seemed downcast, almost defeated even before the battle had begun.
Looking past
Sir Percival to me, Arthur said, “Modred expects us to charge uphill toward him.”
That would not be wise, I knew. In the years since I’d first met Arthur, all the knights in Britain had learned to use stirrups. If Arthur’s men charged uphill, Modred would wait until they were halfway up the rise or more, then have his host charge at us downhill. They would have more than merely the advantage
of numbers; they would have momentum, and steeds that were fresh and rested.
“Should we wait him out?” I asked. It was a suggestion, really, but I wanted Arthur to make the decision on his own.
He cocked an eye at me. “You think he would be impatient enough to charge at us?”
“He might,” I said, with a shrug. “He’s young. Perhaps he’s also foolish.”
Arthur thought about it for several heartbeats.
At last he said, “Let’s see.”
So we spent the morning sitting in battle array, neither side budging except for the occasional nervous shuffling of the horses. The morning fog slowly dissipated, revealing hillocks and shallow dips in the land, which was covered with dead brown grasses and shrubs wilted by frost.
The sun, pale though it was, climbed higher. By midday Arthur allowed his knights
to dismount, a few at a time, so that the churls could bring them food and wine. I could see that Modred did the same.
We were playing a waiting game. Arthur would not be induced into charging uphill against superior numbers; Modred would not take the temptation of charging downhill against us. I wondered how confident Modred was of his men. Arthur had the cream of the Round Table’s knights with
him, what was left of them. Modred’s forces must be composed of lesser men, I thought.
At any rate, Arthur was content to be patient, while Modred was unwilling to attack. The sun sank low in the west, twilight shadows began to creep across the uneven brown land. I could hear the knights behind me muttering. Some sounded impatient, others relieved that there would be no fighting this day.
At
last Arthur told his bugler to sound retire. As the first notes rent the air, I heard the same call from Modred’s host. There would be no battle until the morrow.
2
It was careless of me to discount the possibility that the Golden One would not wait for the battle, but try to kill Arthur that very night.
The churls pitched tents for the knights, squires took the horses to the roped-off makeshift
corral and saw to their feeding. Camp women started cook fires and the men ate boiled meat and cabbages. Arthur gave strict orders about wine: two goblets for each man, no more.
Pickets were placed at the edge of our camp, guarding us against a surprise attack, and more stood at our rear, to prevent deserters from skulking off into the night. It grew pitch dark, with neither moon nor stars showing
through the gloomy low clouds. The camp quieted as the men slept on the cold ground, some of them with the grimy women who had accompanied us.
Wondering how many men would try to sneak away in the night, I unrolled my sleeping blanket next to Arthur’s tent and sat with my back against a rounded boulder. I willed my body to relax; sleep would be good in preparation for tomorrow’s exertions.
As I began to doze, though, I sensed a furtive movement behind me. Worming myself down onto the blanket, I stretched out and pretended to sleep, while straining every nerve to detect what was going on.
There were three of them, quietly slicing at the rear of Arthur’s tent, daggers in their hands, swords at the hips. I turned slowly onto my side and reached for my own sword. The three of them cut
at the tent’s fabric. But they were not infiltrators from Modred’s camp; I recognized the three of them. They were knights that Arthur had recruited during the long march north.
Bloody anger filled me. Assassins. Traitors. Men who had sworn fealty to Arthur and now were going to murder him. If I allowed them to.
Leaping to my feet, I roared, “Assassins!” loudly enough to wake the whole camp.
The three of them froze for an instant, then reached for their swords as I rushed at them.
The first one had barely pulled his sword halfway from its scabbard when I hacked his arm off. He screamed as blood spurted and the other two backed away from me, wide-eyed with sudden terror. With my senses heightened I easily knocked the sword out of the hand of the killer on my left, then clouted the
other one on the head with the pommel of my sword. He went down like a felled oak.
The one I had disarmed was crouching to reach for his sword, on the ground.
“Don’t make me kill you,” I said.
He froze where he stood, stooped over, his hand stretching toward the sword.
A dozen other knights were rushing toward us in their sleeping shifts, each of them brandishing a sword that glittered in
the firelight.
The would-be assassin dropped to his knees and began to sob. “Spare me! Please spare me!”
Arthur came up beside me, Excalibur in his right hand. “What’s this?”
I pointed to the kneeling one, then to the one I had knocked unconscious, who was now groaning and writhing on the ground.
“Assassins, my lord. Traitors who had sworn fealty to you but this night intended to slay you.”
With a glance at the third one, lying dead next to his severed arm, Arthur said, “You’ve saved my life, Orion.”
I nodded grimly, then returned my attention to the one on his knees. “Who sent you? Why have you tried to murder the High King?”
Visibly trembling, he babbled, “A sorceress, my lord. A powerful sorceress. She appeared to us in the night. She took us to Lord Modred’s castle by magic!”
Arthur muttered, “Morganna.”
“What did Modred say to you?” I demanded.
The man swallowed, then confessed, “He said that Arthur was prophesied to die and if we fulfilled the prophecy he would reward us with rich lands and castles of our own. He would make us nobles at his court!”
“He would slit your throats,” Arthur said.
Throwing himself facedown on the ground, the knight begged, “Have mercy
on me, sire. Have mercy!”
“Hang them both,” said Arthur. And he turned away.
The other knights grabbed the two of them, the one still pleading for mercy, the other too stunned from my blow to know what was happening to him.
I followed Arthur to the front of his tent.
“Modred is not so certain of victory,” I said. “He wanted to make certain that you were dead and unable to lead your army.”
Arthur nodded bleakly. “And his mother, the witch Morganna, is using her powers to help him.”
I took the opening. “My lord, I think she had been using her powers to undermine your strength, invading your dreams to weaken you.”
He looked at me for a long moment, and I saw understanding dawn in his gold-flecked eyes. “Perhaps so, Orion. Perhaps so.”
“I am certain of it, sire.”
His old grin lit
his face. “So what should I do about it, sir knight? Refrain from sleeping?”
“No, my lord. Sleep well and deep,” I told him.
I had decided to deal with Morganna/Aphrodite myself.
But how?
3
The night turned cold, but the men built a sizable bonfire to illuminate the hanging of the two would-be assassins. Arthur came out of his mutilated tent, wearing a fresh tunic, to preside over the executions
personally.
Knights, squires, even the lowest of the workmen and serving women crowded around, lurid firelight painting their eager faces, while a squad of knights dragged the two bound men to the sturdy oak that had been selected for use as a gallows. They both looked sullen, resigned to the fate they knew they could not escape.
A knight shoved one of the prisoners so hard that he stumbled
and fell. The knight aimed a hearty kick at his ribs.
“None of that!” Arthur bellowed, and the knight checked his blow. “This is Britain and we are servants of God,” Arthur proclaimed loudly to the throng. “We are not barbarians who torture prisoners for the sinful joy of it.”
The crowd murmured unhappily. They were not above watching a pair of helpless prisoners get a beating.
A brown-robed
friar stepped up and muttered some words in Latin, then made the sign of the cross in the air. He stepped back, bowed to Arthur, and let the executions proceed.
The knights put rope nooses around the prisoners’ necks, pulled them snug, then tossed the lengths of the ropes over the lowest branch of the tree. Two knights on each rope hauled them off their feet. The crowd roared with delight. The
men kicked and thrashed about for a few moments, their faces bloating, flushing, and then going blue. They emptied their bladders and their bowels in their struggle and the onlookers laughed. Finally they both gave a final jerk and went still, swinging in the cold night wind. The crowd fell silent.
“May God have mercy on their souls,” Arthur said, mechanically.
“Not bloody likely!” came a voice
from the throng.
The onlookers dispersed, some laughing. I saw two men exchange a few coins; they had apparently bet on which of the hanged men would die first.
Arthur trudged back to his tent, looking totally untroubled. A pair of miscreants had gotten what they deserved.
And I still faced the problem of how to deal with Morganna.
I went back to my blankets and sat once again against the
same rock. The bonfire collapsed with a crackling hiss, spitting embers, but at this distance it gave more light than heat.
I recalled that when I had returned to the Creators’ city they had all gathered to face me. If I translated myself there again, probably the same thing will happen. I couldn’t fight them all; I needed to get Aphrodite by herself.
I thought of calling on Anya to help me,
but she had her own tasks to perform, her own problems to deal with, far away in space and time. No, I told myself, dealing with Morganna is something I must do myself. Without help. Myself against the self-styled witch.
I had to face her here, in this placetime, in her guise as Morganna, at her castle in Bernicia on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall.
So there is where I went.
To my surprise,
it wasn’t that difficult. I pictured the dark and gloomy castle, remembering it from when Arthur and his knights had gone there years earlier. I closed my eyes and felt an instant of bitter cold and sudden weightlessness, as if I were falling from an enormous height.
When I opened my eyes I was standing atop the highest battlement in Morganna’s castle, with a cold wet wind from the nearby sea
whistling through my thin tunic.
“How dare you?”
Turning, I saw Morganna standing before me. Aphrodite, really, more alluring than any woman has a right to be. Temptress. Goddess of love and beauty. In this time and place she posed as Morganna, the witch, dressed in a stygian black gown that clung to her figure like a second skin.
“Good evening,” I said.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded,
her dark eyes blazing. “Who sent you?”
I took a step toward her. Even furious as she obviously was, she was temptation personified.
“No one sent me. I came on my own volition.”
“Impossible! A creature? Aten didn’t give you such capabilities.”
I smiled at her. “I’ve learned a lot. My powers are growing.”
For all her haughty anger, Aphrodite backed away from me. “This is Anya’s doing,” she
spat. “She’s working against Aten.”
“And you’re working for him.”
“We all are.” Then she amended, “Most of us.”
“To kill Arthur.”
“He must die. It’s inevitable. All mortals die.”
“But you Creators are immortal.”
“Yes.” But there was a quaver of uncertainty in her voice, a hint of doubt.
I chuckled. “Of course. How can you know you’re immortal? You’d have to be able to see all of eternity
to be certain.”
More firmly, she demanded once again, “Why are you here, Orion?”
“To get you out of Arthur’s dreams.”
“Ha! And how do you propose to accomplish that?”
“It’s very simple,” I said, stepping so close we were almost touching. “You’ve assumed human form. All mortals die.” And I circled her smooth alabaster throat with my right hand.
Strangely, she smiled. “Mortals enjoy pleasures
that not even the Creators may taste, Orion.” She melted into my arms. My right hand slid down her back, to her waist.
“Forget your precious Anya for a while, Orion,” she whispered into my ear. “I’ll leave Arthur alone if it pleases you.”
Resisting her was harder than facing the cave bear that had crushed the life out of me in an earlier existence, harder than allowing Philip of Macedon’s guards
to kill me after he’d been assassinated. My body wanted her and my mind was spinning, falling.