This kind of discipline was unknown to the Celts. These knights had little knowledge of tactics beyond the headlong charge into their enemy’s midst. After that, their battles broke down into individual fights, man-on-man, little better than the vainglorious Achaean warriors who spent years on the plain of Ilium because they had no idea of how to surmount Troy’s high walls.
So Arthur’s
knights slowly, unwillingly retreated into the fog. Even in the little I could see clearly, instead of moving in a smooth unbroken line they were already clumping together, a few knights riding close to each other, leaving gaps in their line.
“Sire,” I said to Arthur, “the men should keep an even separation from one another. If there are breaks in our line, the enemy can take advantage of them.”
Arthur nodded. “Ride up and down the line, Orion, and tell them what they must do. Tell them their High King commands it.”
“Yes, sire,” I said.
But as I spurred my horse to begin giving Arthur’s orders, the air was rent by the blast of bugles. Looking up, I saw that Modred’s host was at last charging down the slope toward us, lances leveled, pennants flying.
“Ah-ah!” Arthur shouted, relieved,
as squires went racing among our knights, handing out helmets and shields, heavy thrusting lances and lighter throwing spears.
Arthur’s face was smiling, buoyant, as he lifted his helmet over his head. The battle was about to begin and he was in his element. Mongol tactics were not for him, even though he understood the value of them. The enemy was charging at him, and he was eager to countercharge
straight into their midst, lance in hand, Excalibur at his side.
I pulled on my helmet and spurred my mount. The whole army was aroar, charging now pell-mell into the enemy, all thought of tactics and discipline blown away in their sudden relief. This they could understand. Face your enemy and smite him with heavy blows. Battle at its most brutally elemental.
Through the swirling fog we charged,
lances in hand, horses racing at full gallop. Once again my senses went into overdrive; I saw Modred’s knights charging at us as if the world had slowed to dreamy languor. Even as I spurred my steed onward I could see the bulging eyes of the horses approaching us, spittle dripping from their bared teeth.
With their helmets hiding their faces and their heavy shields in front of their bodies, the
enemy knights looked more like robots than humans. I could not see their faces. I tried to tell myself that they were intent on killing me, and worse, killing Arthur.
Yet the old primitive excitement that I once felt in the heat of battle was no longer in me. I tried to tell myself that these faceless warriors charging toward me were machines, toys, inhuman killing machines. Yet I knew that inside
those helmets and suits of chain mail were men, human beings who lived and hoped and feared and did not want to die.
No matter. They were upon us and the two armies clashed into each other with a roar and clang of metal against metal. Lances splintered. Knights were lifted out of their saddles. Men and horses went down. The swirling fog was filled with shouts and curses, screams of agony and
blood-chilling war cries.
In an instant the battle lost all semblance of order. We were not two armies fighting against one another but a wild tangle of men slashing and thrusting in individual combats.
Charging alongside Arthur, I smashed into the first knight I could reach, my lance cracking through his shield and knocking him out of his saddle. He crashed to the ground as I drove past him
and took on another knight. His lance thrust screeched along my shield and passed me harmlessly while I feinted toward his helmeted head and then dug my lance into his middle, beneath his raised shield. He screamed in agony and fell off his charging horse.
A sudden blow from behind dazed me. Turning, I saw a knight in heavy body armor, swinging a studded metal ball at the end of a short chain.
Off balance from his first strike, I raised my shield to ward off his next, but he cannily changed the direction of his blow and struck my horse hard on the neck. The poor animal reared and buckled on his hind legs, taking me to the ground, one leg pinned beneath the thrashing steed.
My mace-wielding foe wheeled about and came at me again, swinging that studded metal ball over his head and yelling
a piercing battle cry. Watching him in slow motion, I tugged at my leg, pinned beneath the bleeding horse, and ducked his blow as he rode past.
My horse scrambled to his feet and trotted away unsteadily, bleeding from the wound in his neck. I pulled out my sword as I slowly got to my feet. My leg felt numb but there was no time to test its strength. The knight was charging me again; I could see
wisps of fog swirling about him as he came galloping in slow motion toward me.
I threw my shield at him edgewise, like an oversize discus. It struck him a glancing blow, but it was enough of a distraction for me to ram my sword into his side as he rode past. I felt the point grate on bone. He howled and rode off, slumping in his saddle as he disappeared into the fog.
I yanked the heavy helmet
off my head; it restricted my vision too much. Glancing around, I saw that the battle had broken down into a wild melee, a tangle of individual fights. Knights ahorse and on foot were battering each other in the swirling mist. The fog was still chill, but we were hot with rage and bloodlust.
Where is Arthur? I wondered. I had been at his side when we first charged against Modred’s host, but now
he was nowhere to be seen. I started off afoot to seek him, without helmet, without shield, sword in hand.
A mounted knight came charging at me, crouching behind his shield, his lance pointed at my heart. I froze, watching the point of his lance as it bobbed slowly in rhythm to his horse’s pounding hooves. At the last instant I dodged sideways, and as he rode past me I hacked at his extended
arm. He howled and dropped his lance, his arm almost severed just above the elbow.
Two more men in chain mail advanced upon me on foot behind their heavy shields, one bearing the emblem of a bear, the other a stooping hawk. Both of them carried long Celtic blades.
“Yield, sir knight,” called one of them from inside his helmet, “or we will slay you.”
“Yield yourselves, gentlemen,” I shouted
back at them, “and save your lives.”
That ended our conversation. They ran at me, spreading slightly to come at me from two different angles. I sprang at the one on my right, diving into a rolling block that knocked his legs out from under him. Leaping to my feet, I drove my sword into his ribs before he could get up, then recovered just in time to block the vicious swing his companion aimed
at me.
I backed away from the dying man on the ground while his companion advanced upon me, shield in front of him, held up to the eye slits of his helmet. Slowly he came at me, confident that a man without shield or helm had no chance against him. I retreated slowly, feeling my way across the uneven ground, littered with fallen men and broken weapons.
I knew that it is impossible to thrust
at an opponent and defend yourself at the same time. A winning fighter must be fast enough to switch from offense to defense almost instantaneously. But with my hyperspeeded senses, almost instantaneously was not good enough.
My attacker aimed a mighty blow at me. I saw him cock his right arm over his shoulder, plant his feet, and swing his sword at my bare head. His blow came at me as if it
were swinging through a thick invisible goo, languorously slow, so leisurely that I had plenty of time to dance back and avoid it, then thrust forward and slice his forearm from wrist to elbow with the point of my sword.
He bellowed with pain as his sword fell to the ground. For a moment we faced each other, his mouth hanging open, his face twisted in agony. He awkwardly fumbled off his shield
so that he could grip his bleeding arm with his left hand. I pointed my dripping sword at his throat.
He dropped to his knees and beseeched, “Spare me!”
I nodded and stepped past him, looking for Arthur. And felt a searing pain in my back, just above the kidney. The treacherous dog had stabbed me with his dagger. I swung round and took his head off with a swipe of my sword. Then I sank to my
knees, bleeding hard. I reached around and yanked out the bloody dagger, then willed my blood vessels to clamp down and stanch the bleeding. The pain was monumental, but I commanded my brain to ignore the flaming signals my nervous system was flashing.
Still, the world wavered before my eyes and I toppled face-first onto the cold bare ground and slipped into unconsciousness.
3
How long I was
down I don’t know, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. When I opened my eyes men were still hacking at each other in the swirling fog, screaming and cursing in victory or in pain; riderless horses trotted by, their eyes wide with fear as their masters killed and maimed one another. The broken, rocky ground became slippery with blood. Bodies of the dead and wounded littered the field.
But where was Arthur? I had to find him.
I saw Sir Percival, down on one knee, crouching behind his battered shield that bore his red lion emblem. He was bleeding heavily from a gash on his shoulder. Three mounted knights surrounded him, and it was clear that they were offering him no quarter.
Stiffly, I got to my feet. The wound in my back was already clotting; the pain was only a distant throbbing
ache. Picking up a spear from the littered ground, I hurled it at the horsemen surrounding Percival. It sailed past them harmlessly, but it served its purpose. They turned their attention to me.
As they spurred their horses, I charged toward them and jabbed my sword toward the eyes of the nearest horse. It whinnied in fright and reared on its hind legs, nearly throwing the knight out of his saddle.
Running past him, I slashed at the exposed leg of the second of them before he could lower his shield enough to protect himself.
Percival staggered to his feet and hurled himself at the third, dragging him out of his saddle to thump painfully on the ground. In an instant all three of them were dead, and I saw that Percival was bleeding from several wounds and gasping heavily. His shield was badly
dented; even his helmet was cracked.
“Get away while you can,” I told him.
“Not while there are enemies to fight,” he answered bravely.
“Then find yourself a horse.”
Nodding, he added, “And a lance.”
“Where is the High King?” I asked him.
Percival pointed into the fog. “He went after Sir Modred.”
I started off in the direction he pointed to, limping slightly, my leg weak and my back twinging.
It wasn’t a battle now, the fight had turned into nothing more than a jumble of separate brawls, men slashing at each other with swords and maces, spears and knives, even bare hands, intent on slaughtering each other. Blood and pain and red-hot fury filled the cold gray fog. Men were killing each other for the mindless urge to kill, to batter, to destroy their enemy.
The Creators had built that
bloodlust into the human psyche, I knew. They had made us killers, haters, beasts who slaughtered not merely to survive but to revel in the power and passion of killing.
I hated them for it. All of them, especially Aten. All of them, except Anya.
And then I saw Arthur. With Modred. It was a sight I will never forget.
They were up on a little rise in the ground, two dark figures in the gray
fog, silhouetted against the silvery, clouded sky. Both of them had lost their helmets. Neither of them bore his shield.
Arthur had transfixed Modred on his lance, gripping the lance with both his hands, his teeth gritted, the expression on his face awful as he stared at his spitted son.
And Modred was crawling up the length of the lance, even as his entrails slithered out of him, dragging himself
inch by agonizing inch, the lance penetrating completely through him, dripping blood, pulling himself along with one hand while his other gripped a heavy sword. Modred’s once-handsome face was grimacing with agony—and something more: sheer hatred, unadulterated malevolence—his delicate features were twisted into the countenance of a demon from hell.
I was more than a hundred paces from them,
but I tried my best to reach them, hobbling slightly from my wounds.
Modred was spitted on Arthur’s lance, but Arthur himself was also transfixed, wide-eyed, as he watched his son crawling toward him, sword raised high to strike.
It was a horrific nightmare. In sluggish slow motion I watched Modred creeping nearer to his father, while Arthur did nothing but stand there, gripping the lance in
both hands, staring at his approaching doom.
I wanted to scream at them. I wanted to tell Arthur to drop the bloody lance and get away. Modred was as good as dead, save yourself, I wanted to say. But no words came out of my mouth. In desperation I hurled my sword at Modred, but it sailed past him unheeded.
I knew I was running as fast as I could but it wasn’t fast enough. Modred, his teeth bared,
his eyes blazing hate, struck at Arthur’s bare head. I saw the blade smash into Arthur’s light brown hair. His knees buckled and he dropped the lance at last as he sank to the ground, bleeding. Modred fell, too, writhing for a few moments before his body finally stiffened into death.
“It’s finished, creature.” I heard Aten’s arrogant voice in my mind. “Your precious Arthur is dying.”
“He’s not
dead yet,” I muttered as I stumbled toward the fallen High King.
Arthur’s scalp was streaming blood, his amber eyes were half closed, yet still he recognized me. “Orion…” he gasped. “Orion…”
“Come, sire,” I said, sliding an arm beneath his shoulders. “I’ll help you.”
He groaned with pain as I lifted him to a sitting position. “No use, sir knight. I am slain.”
“You’re not dead yet, sire,” I
said, wishing I knew what to do, how to help him.
“Excalibur,” he murmured. “What will become of Excalibur?”
“That’s not important now, sire. We must get you to safety, to a healer.”
“Merlin could heal me. He could do anything.” Arthur’s voice was growing fainter. He was dying.