Short fiction complete, p.278
Short Fiction Complete, page 278
Alexander pushed ahead on old Ox-Head, his favorite steed, wading through the Athenian infantry, nearly sliding off his mount while jamming his spear into a screaming hoplite. Clutching my mount between my knees, I urged the horse on through the wildly surging tumult until I was beside Alexander, protecting his unshielded right side. Together we drove through the scattering Athenians, then began the grim task of riding down the fleeing hoplites and slaughtering them to the last man.
My eyes snapped open. It was still dark, well before dawn. Why did I dream of Alexander? Of all the lives I have led, of all the deaths that I have known, why did I dream this night of Alexander and the Macedonian cavalry?
“Find the answer, Sarmatian,” whispered an invisible voice. A woman’s voice. Anya!
I sat up on the pallet, ignoring the cold wind that sliced through the rickety slats of the stable, disregarding the smell and the snuffling of the drowsing horses.
Sarmatian. Anya called me a Sarmatian. I remembered that I had claimed to be a Sarmatian when I had first found myself at Amesbury, begging a skeptical Sir Bors for a place in Arthur’s service.
Sarmatian.
I sat on the pallet wondering until daylight slanted through the cracks in the stable wall. I washed at the horse trough, drawing the usual laughs and jeers from the other squires and churls.
“You washed yesterday, Orion! Aren’t you afraid you’ll drown yourself?” laughed one of them.
“He washes every morning,” called another, already at work shoveling in the manure pile. “He wants to smell pretty for the girls.”
There were no women in Amesbury fort. All the women and children and old men of the region had been moved farther inland to be safe from the Saxons. If the fort fell, they would be defenseless.
“Don’t you know that washing makes you weak, Orion? You’re scrubbing all your strength away!”
They laughed uproariously. It was the only relief they had from the tension. We all knew that there was an army of Saxons and other invaders just outside our gate, a barbarian army that was growing with every passing day.
Ignoring their jibes I walked across the dung-dotted courtyard to the timbered tower of the fort. The guard recognized me and let me pass unchallenged. Instead of going to Arthur’s quarters, however, I climbed the creaking wooden stairs to Merlin’s tower-top aerie.
There was no door at the top of the stairs. The top level of the tower was a single open area, roofed over with heavy beams of rough-hewn logs. It was a misty autumn morning, dank and chill. On a clear day, I knew, from up at this height you could see almost to the waters of the Solent and the Isle of Wight.
Merlin was standing at the low wall, staring out across the fog-shrouded camp of the barbarians, his back to me. His possessions were meager a table that held several manuscript rolls, a few unmatched chairs, a couple of chests, a few blankets for a sleeping roll. Nothing more.
“What do you want, Orion?” he asked, without turning to look at me.
“How did you know it was me?” I asked.
He shrugged his frail shoulders. “Who else could it be?”
That puzzled me. He had a reputation as a wizard, a magician who could cast spells and foresee the future. Yet, as he finally turned to face me, all I saw was a wizened old man in a stained, wrinkled robe of patched homespun with a long, dirty-white beard and thin, lank hair falling past his Shoulders; both beard and hair were knotted and filthy.
“I need your help,” I said.
“Yes, I know,” he replied as he walked slowly, arthritically, toward his table.
“Then you know what I am about to ask.”
“Naturally.” He slowly sank his emaciated frame into the cushion-covered chair.
I stood before the table and folded my arms across my chest. I wore only a thin tunic, scant proof against the frosty autumn morning, but I have always been able to clamp down my peripheral blood vessels to keep my body heat from radiating away. I can also step up my metabolic rate when I have to, burning off fat stored in the body’s tissues to keep me warm.
“Sit down, Orion,” said Merlin. “It hurts my neck to have to crane up to see your eyes.”
As I sat, I said, “Can you help me, then?”
“Naturally,” he repeated.
“Well, then?”
He stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. Old though he may have been, there was a gleam of intelligence, of curiosity, in his gray-green eyes.
Slowly, a smile spread across his wrinkled face. “You are playing a game with me, Orion.”
“And you with me, sir,” I answered.
“Must I ask you what your problem is?”
“You implied that you already knew.”
His smile broadened. “Ah, yes. That is part of a wizard’s kit, you see. Allow the supplicant to believe that you know everything, and the supplicant will believe whatever you say.”
I grinned back at him and recalled, somehow, that psychiatrists in a future civilization would use the same trick on their patients.
“So tell me truly, Orion, why do you seek my help?”
“I can’t remember my past,” I said. “I can’t remember anything from before the first day I came to Amesbury and met Arthur.”
He leaned forward, all eager attention now. “Nothing at all?”
“Only my name, and the idea that I am a Sarmatian, whatever that is.”
“You don’t even know what a Sarmatian is?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
Merlin steepled his fingers. They were long and bony, the backs of his hands veined in blue.
“The Sarmatians were a warrior tribe from far to the east, somewhere in Asia,” Merlin told me. “Many of them joined the Roman legions, where they served as cavalry. They were great horsemen, great fighters.”
“Were?” I probed.
“They left when the legions departed Britain. I had assumed that you were one of them who had stayed behind, deserted the legions.”
“You thought me a deserter?”
“Bors did, as soon as you told him you were a Sarmatian. That is why he was so suspicious of you at first.”
Nodding with newfound understanding, I asked, “Tell me more about the Sarmatians.”
Merlin leaned his head back, raised his eyes to the beamed ceiling. “They were fine metalworkers. They claimed to have invented chain mail, and something else . . . I can’t quite recall what it was.”
“Chain mail is a great advantage.”
“Yes, we have our smith working night and day to produce more.”
“They came from Asia, you say?”
“So I remember.”
Merlin spent much of the morning asking me questions about myself, questions I could not answer. Aten always erased my memories before sending me on a new mission. He said he provided me with only enough information to perform my task. Yet on more than one mission I fought through his mental blocks and recalled things he would have preferred I did not know.
But on that chill, foggy morning I could remember nothing beyond my first moments at Amesbury fort. A young serving boy brought up a tray of bread and a few scraps of cheese with thin, bitter beer for our breakfast. I realized that even with the fort besieged and our food supply dwindling, Merlin had better rations than the knights and squires down in the courtyard, despite his frail frame.
A horn blast ended our conversation. Arthur was calling all his men together. I got up from the chair before Merlin’s table and took my leave as politely as I could.
As I got the stairs leading down, the old man called out to me. “Orion! I remember the other thing that the Sarmatians are reputed to have invented.”
“And what is that?” I asked.
“Some sort of foot gear to help a man get up onto his horse. I believe they called it a stirrup.”
Stirrups, I thought. Yes.
“Oh, and one thing more. A device that they fixed to the heels of their boots, to prick their mounts.”
Spurs.
All that day I thought about stirrups and spurs, two simple and obvious-seeming inventions. Yet they were obvious only in hindsight, as most great inventions are.
Arthur and the other knights had neither stirrups nor spurs. When they rode into battle, they had to rein in their horses or the first shock of impact with their spears would knock them out of their saddles. Often a knight went down with his victim when he forgot to slow his mount. Even in Alexander’s day, I remembered, we had to be careful to stay on our mounts as we speared footmen.
It was the same using our swords. A mounted warrior had to grip his steed tightly with his knees if he wanted to remain mounted while he slashed at the enemy with his sword.
But with stirrups a man could stay in the saddle despite a smashing impact. And with spurs he could goad his steed into a flat-out gallop. Instead of wading into the enemy so slowly that they could eventually swarm us under, we could charge into them like a thunderbolt, crash through their formation, then wheel around and charge again.
As the sun was setting I went to the blacksmith. He was a big, ham-fisted, hairy man with bulging muscles and little patience for what seemed like a hare brained idea.
“I’ve got all I can do to make the chain mail that my lord Arthur is demanding,” he said in a loud, barking voice. Wiping sweat from his brow with a meaty forearm, he went on, “I don’t have time to make some trinkets for you.”
“Very well,” I replied. “I’ll make them for myself.”
“Not until the dinner horn sounds,” he said petulantly. “I’ve got to work this forge until then.”
“I’ll wait.”
For the next few hours I watched the brawny blacksmith and his young apprentices forging chain mail links, heating the metal in their fire while two of the lads wearily pumped the bellows that kept the coals hot, hammering the links into shape, quenching them in a bucket of water with a steaming hiss. It was hot work, but it was simple enough for me to learn how to do it merely by watching them.
The dinner horn sounded at last and the blacksmith took his grudging leave.
“If you steal or break anything,” he warned with a growl, “I’ll snap your spine for you.”
He was big enough to do it, if I let him.
I stripped off my tunic and, clad only in my drawers and, strapped to my thigh, the dagger that Odysseos had given me at Troy, I began forging a pair of stirrups.
They were lopsided and certainly no things of beauty, but I admired them nonetheless. Forging a pair of spurs was easier, especially since I did not want them to be so sharp that they would draw blood. They were nothing elaborate, merely slightly curved spikes of iron.
When I went to my pallet that night I was physically tired from the hard labor but emotionally eager to try my new creations in the morning. I looked forward to a good night’s sleep.
But no sooner had I closed my eyes than I found myself standing on the shore of a fog-shrouded lake. The moon ducked in and out of scudding clouds. I was wearing a full robe of chain mail with a light linen tunic over it, my sword buckled at my hip.
I remembered this lake. It was where I had brought Arthur so that Anya could give him Excalibur.
I looked out across the water, silvered by the moonlight, expecting to see the fortress of stainless metal arising from the lake’s depths as it had then. Nothing. The waves lapped softly against the muddy shore, a Nightingale sang its achingly sweet song somewhere back among the trees.
And then Anya’s voice called low, “Orion.”
Swiftly I turned and she was there standing within arm’s reach, as beautiful as only a goddess can be, wearing a simple, supple robe of purest white silk that flowed to the ground. Her midnight-dark hair was bound up with coils of silver thread; links of silver adorned her throat and wrists.
We embraced and I kissed her with all the fervor of a thousand centuries of separation. For long moments neither of us said a word, we scarcely breathed, so happy to be in each other’s arms again.
But at last Anya moved slightly away. Her hands still on my shoulders, she looked up into my face. Her silver-gray eyes were solemn, sorrowful.
“I can only remain a few moments, my love,” she said in a near-whisper, as if afraid someone would overhear us. “I’ve come to warn you.”
“Against Aten?”
She shook her head slightly. “Not merely him. Several of the other Creators are working with him to help the Saxons and other invaders conquer Arthur’s Celts and make themselves masters of this entire island.”
“But why?” I asked. “What purpose does it serve to tear down what little is left of civilization here?”
“It involves forces that reach across the entire galaxy, Orion. This point in spacetime is a nexus, a crucial focal point in the continuum.”
I recalled Aten’s words to me from years earlier. “He wants to build an empire of barbarians that will reach from the steppes of Asia to these British Isles—all under his domination.”
Anya hesitated a moment, then said, “It may be necessary, Orion. Aten’s plan may be the only way to keep the continuum from shattering.”
“I can’t believe that.”
She smiled, sadly. “You mean you don’t want to believe it.”
“It means that Arthur must be killed.”
She nodded solemnly.
“No,” I said. “I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t oppose Aten’s will! He’ll obliterate you!”
Anger was seething within me. “If I do what Aten wants, can we be together? Can we return to Paradise and live in peace?”
Her lovely face became tragic. “I want to, my love. But it will be impossible.”
“Because he’ll keep us apart,” I snapped.
“Because the work of saving the continuum, the task of keeping this worldline from collapsing and destroying everything we know, requires all my strength, all my energy.”
“Forever?”
“For as long as it takes,” she said. “My darling, I want to be with you for all the eternities. But how can we be together if the entire universe implodes? Everything will be gone, wiped away as if it never existed.”
For many long, silent moments I stared into her beautiful eyes. I saw sorrow there, a melancholy that spanned centuries of yearning.
At last I found my voice. “And to save the universe, Arthur must be killed.”
“That is Aten’s plan. The barbarians are uniting amongst themselves now. There is no need for Arthur in this timeline any more.”
“Tell Aten to make another plan,” I said. “As long as I live I will protect Arthur and help him to drive the barbarians out of Britain.”
If I had thought half a second about my words, I would have expected Anya to be surprised, shocked perhaps, even angry.
Instead she smiled. “You would defy Aten, even at the risk of final death?”
I smiled back at her, grimly. “He promised me an especially painful final death.”
Her smile faded. “He means to keep that promise.”
“And I mean to stand by Arthur until my final breath.”
“I won’t be able to help you,” Anya warned. “I have other tasks to do, far off among the star clouds.”
I nodded, accepting that. “Tell Aten he’ll have to save this timeline with Arthur in it. Let him build an empire of the Celts from this island to the farthest reaches of Asia.”
“You run great risks, Orion.”
“What of it? If we can’t be together, what good is living to me?”
She kissed me again, lightly this time, on the AH lips. “Protect Arthur, then. Help him all you can. But be warned: Aten is not alone in this. Others of the Creators will be working against Arthur.”
“Thanks for the good news,” I said.
“Farewell, my love,” said Anya. “I will return to you as soon as I possibly can.”
I wanted to say several million other things to her but she vanished, simply disappeared before my eyes, like a light winking out. I love you, Anya, I called silently. I’ll find you again wherever and whenever you are, no matter if I have to cross the entire universe of spacetime. I’ll find you and we’ll be together for eternity.
But when I awoke I was back on my pallet in the dungsmelling stable, with the results of my ironwork lying on the straw beside me.
***
I washed as usual at the horse trough and took the usual jeering banter from the squires and churls. But once I sat on the bare dirt and started tying my crudely-made spurs to my ankles, they howled with laugher.
“Are you going to a cock fight, Orion?”
“Maybe he’ll put on wings next and fly out of the fort!”
They rolled on the ground, laughing.
Without a word to them, I went back into the stable and took one of the horses out into the courtyard. When I began to attach my lopsided, ill-formed stirrups to its saddle, they crowded around, curious and grinning.
“What are you doing, Orion?” one of them asked.
Instead of answering, I worked my sandalled foot into one of the stirrups and hoisted myself up into the saddle, careful not to touch the spurs to the horse’s flank. Not yet.
“It’s like a little step!”
“Orion, can’t you swing up on a horse the regular way? Are you so weak from washing every morning that you need a step to help you up?”
They roared with laughter, slapping their thighs and pounding each other’s backs. Wordlessly, I nudged my mount through them and cantered around the courtyard several times. The stirrups felt a little loose. I dismounted and tightened the thongs that held them to the saddle.
By now some of the knights had come out into the courtyard to see what was making the other men laugh so hard.
“What’s that you’ve hooked your feet into?” Gawain called to me. He was several years older than Arthur, built more slightly, his dark hair curled into ringlets that fell past his shoulders.
