Short fiction complete, p.280
Short Fiction Complete, page 280
It was the end of summer, the end of the long months of fighting against the Saxons and Angles and other barbarian tribes who had invaded Britain. Arthur had won a great victory over them at Amesbury, and the High King had summoned his young nephew to his castle at Cadbury.
The attack that night was meant to kill Arthur.
We were sleeping Soundly, even I, who needs very little sleep normally. But the exertions or the battle and the long wearying days of painfully slow travel across the hilly, forested land had made even me drowsy.
I dreamed of Anya.
It was more than a dream. I was with her, the goddess whom I loved, the Creator who loved me. For only a few moments I stood in another world, another dimension, on a grassy hill warm with sunshine where flowers nodded in the gentle breeze from the nearby sea. Soft puffs of clouds scudded across a brilliant blue sky. In the distance, when? the hill sloped down to a wide sandy beach, there stood a magnificent city filled with gigantic monuments and graceful temples.
But the city was empty, lifeless, it was the city of the Creators, I knew, the beings who traveled through lime to manipulate human history to suit their whims.
Anya was the only one of the Creators who cared about humankind. She loved me, this supernally beautiful woman of the lustrous sable-black hair and fathomless gray eyes. In other limes she had been worshiped as Athena, Isis. Artemis. I had given my life for her, more than once.
She stood before me on that sun-dappled hillside, draped in a supple robe of silver threads. I reached out to her, but she raised a warning hand.
“Awake, Onon,” she said, her voice urgent, her lovely face intent with alarm. “Arthur has been betrayed.”
My eyes popped open. I was back in the clearing in the forest, hardly a moonbeam breaking through the dark canopy of the trees. Our fire was down to feeble embers. I didn’t move a muscle. A drill wind sighed through the boughs so high above; An owl hooted once, then again.
It was no owl, I realized. Men were creeping around our little camp, surrounding us.
Furtively, I reached for the sword that lay at my side. My eves adjusted to the dim light of our fire’s embers, and I could see the shadowy shapes of the attackers edging closer to Arthur’s sleeping men.
“To arms!” I bellowed at the top of my voice, leaping to my feet, sword in hand. “Saxons!”
There were at least forty of them. I ran straight at the nearest ones, a trio of burly men gripping long two-handed swords. My senses went into overdrive; the action before me seemed to slow down, as if time itself had suddenly altered, stretching like taffy into a languid dreamlike pace.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Arthur and his knights rousing themselves. Men were shouting, cursing, and someone screamed his death agony.
All this as the three before me braced themselves and raised their heavy swords against me. I dove headfirst into the nearest one, leaving my feet entirely in a leap that buried the point of my sword in his chest. We toppled to the ground together, his blood fountaining as I yanked my sword out of him and rolled away from a mighty two-handed clout that would have cleaved me in two if it had landed on me.
Scrambling to my feet, I sliced the villain through his throat before he could swing at me again. He crumpled, gurgling blood, as I danced away from the powerful swing of his companion, then took off both his hands with a single blow to his wrists He shrieked, wide-eyed with pain and terror, as his sword fell to the ground with both his hands still gripping it.
Leaving him, I turned to see that Arthur’s knights were giving a good account of themselves. Without shields or helmets, without even their chain mail, they still were hacking through the attackers with grim efficiency.
I saw one of the attackers standing oft, lurking beside the massive bole of a rough-barked tree. Their leader, I thought, and raced toward him. He saw me and turned to flee.
I hefted my sword and threw it at him. It was a clumsy throw, and the sword hit with the flat of the blade between his shoulders. The impact was enough to send him sprawling, but by the time I reached him he was scrambling to his feet, his own sword in his right hand and my sword in his left.
He grinned at me like a wolf. “Now you die, fool.”
I reached for the dagger I always kept strapped to my thigh, the dagger that Odysseos had given me in the Greek camp on the shore of Ilium. Not much against two swords, but better than my bare hands.
Behind me I heard the din of battle: swords clanging. men screaming in pain, even The panicked horses neighing and stomping, trying to break their tethers and run away from this bloody mayhem.
He advanced upon me, waving his two swords as if trying to hypnotize me. I watched him, my supercharged senses studying every bunching of his muscles, every movement of his eyes, he was stalking me, still grinning confidently.
I flipped the dagger in my hand so that I held it by the point and, before he could think to move, hurled it into his chest, hit him with a solid thunk, and he staggered. The confident grin faded. His mouth filled with blood. He tried to step toward me, tried to reach me with the swords, but his legs had no strength in them. He collapsed face-first at my feet, driving my dagger even deeper into his chest.
By the time I had retrieved both my sword and dagger and cleaned them, Arthur, Bors and Gawain had joined me.
“Your warning saved us,” Arthur said, still breathing hard.
Gawain’s chest was heaving, too. “A few of them ran off ink the woods, but thirty or so will never leave this clearing.”
I nodded. My senses bail calmed down to normal. “Did we lose anyone?” I asked.
Bors answered gruffly, “Not a one. Two of the churls were cut down, and several men are wounded, but that’s all?”
Obviously Sir Bors did not consider laborers to be worth counting as real men.
Arthur asked, “These knaves were not Saxons. They were Colts, as we are Why attack us?”
“Robbers,” said Gawain. “A band or robbers who thought they saw easy pickings.”
“Attacking armed knights?” I asked. “And an equal number of squires? Robbers are not so bold.”
“Eighteen sleeping knights,” said Gawain.
Arthur added, with a smile, “And most squires arc not. fighters of your caliber, Orion.”
Bors bent down to examine the dead man at our feet. “This one was no common robber, my lord,” he said to Arthur.
“What makes you say that?” Gawain challenged.
“I know this face. He was a man-at-arms at Cadbury castle.” Arthur stared at Bors, dumfounded. “He served my uncle Ambrosius?”
Bors nodded grimly. “Look here. He still wears the High King’s crest on his tunic.”
“Treachery,” Gawain whispered.
With a shake of his head, Arthur said in a low, hollow voice, “I can’t believe that my uncle would send these rogues upon us. Why would he do so?”
“Jealousy, my lord,” answered Sir Bors. “Your victory at Amesbury gives the High King pause. He fears for his throne.”
“Bull would never . . .” Arthur seemed thoroughly shocked. “He knows I would never seek his crown.”
“Does he, my lord?” Bors replied. “I wonder.”
• • •
The next day was sultry, the last touch of summer that we would see that year. Our little column of mounted knights and squires climbed the steep dusty road slowly, the horses tired, the men sweating and too weary even to grumble about the long journey or the hot sun blazing out of the cloudless sky.
I rode beside young Arthur, as a squire should. Usually Arthur was bright and eager, full of youthful enthusiasm, but this day he was quiet, thinking about the treachery of the night before. The tunic he wore over his chain mail was covered with dust, stained with sweat. His light brown hair flowed past his shoulders, his blue eyes that usually sparkled with dreams of glory seemed to be focused elsewhere, looking for answers they could not find. Unconsciously, he scratched at his bristly beard. It was coming in nicely, but it must have been itchy.
“I wish Merlin were with us,” he said, with a sigh. “I miss his advice.”
We had left the old wizard behind at Amesbury; too frail to make the trip with us, he would be coming later by wagon, with the arms and other spoils from the battle Arthur had won.
“Merlin is very wise,” I said.
“He prophesied I would win a great victory and he was right,” Arthur said. He treated me more as a friend than a squire, and often unburdened his inner thoughts to me.
His uncle, the High King, had given Arthur charge of the little hilltop fort at Amesbury. Instead of remaining inside its wooden palisade, Arthur had sallied out with his knights and routed the barbarian horde that was besieging the fort.
“It was a great victory, wasn’t it?” he said, smiling at the memory of it.
“Indeed it was, my lord.”
“Thanks to you, Orion.”
I had shown Arthur and his knights how to make stirrups and spurs. The knights had laughed at my “inventions,” but Arthur look them seriously, saw what they could do. With stirrups to hold us firmly on our mounts, we chained the surprised barbarians and smashed them so badly that those who were not killed fled shrieking for their lives.
“You led the charge, my lord,” I said to Arthur. “It was your vision and courage that convinced the knights to accept the new ideas.”
Arthur nodded, his face going somber. “Now I must convince the High King.”
He had concocted a plan to drive the Saxons arid all the other barbarian tribes completely out of Britain. Only three men knew of it, so far: Arthur, Merlin, and myself. It was a plan that could work, I thought, if Ambrosius was willing to accept it and was not already fearful that Arthur threatened his position as High King.
There was one other obstacle in Arthur’s path, as well: me. I had been sent to this time and place to prevent Arthur from defeating the barbarians who were invading Britain. To assassinate him if his enemies didn’t kill him first.
“Look!” Arthur stood in his stirrups and pointed. “Cadbury castle!”
It stood at the crest of the sleep hill we were tediously climbing. Cadbury was a real castle, built of stone, not one of the rude wooden hill forts that Ambrosius had strung along the countryside to contain the Saxon invasion.
“it must have been built by giants,” he said, staring at the high wall and the towers rising above it.
“No,” I said. “It was built by men.”
“But Orion, mortal men could never lift such stones! look at them! It’s impossible.”
I had scaled the beetling walls of Troy and helped to bum the fabled lowers of Ilium. I had tried to defend triple-walled Byzantium against the ferocious Turks. Cadbury was nothing compared to them, but to this eager young knight it was the grandest architecture lie had ever seen.
“Roman engineers built most of it,” I told Arthur. “The High King’s Monecrafters have added to it.”
He refused to believe such a mundane explanation. Arthur was barely out of his teens, full of the naivete and credulous innocence of wide-eyed youth.
“Not even the Romans could have built so high without the aid of the gods,” he said. Then he crossed himself.
I held my tongue. If he knew what the gods truly were, he would weep in shocked disillusion.
“Look, Orion!” he shouted. “Ambrosius himself is at the parapet to welcome us!”
It was true. The flags of the High King snapped briskly in the hot breeze up on the crenelations atop Cadbury’s main gate. The drawbridge was down, and through the open gate I could see that the castle’s courtyard was thronged with people. If Ambrosius had truly sent those scoundrels to murder Arthur, why would he be waiting at his castle’s main gate with pennants flying?
I thought I knew the answer. The would-be murderers had been sent by Aten, the Golden One who created me to be his Hunter, his warrior and assassin. He knew I was resisting his commands to kill Arthur, so he arranged the previous night’s attack. Even though it had failed, it had opened a wound of suspicion between the High King and his young nephew.
Arthur spurred his mount lightly and trolled up the steep, dusty road, eager to reach die castle, I urged my horse forward, to be close enough to protect Arthur if the need arose. He had no idea that the gods he dreamed of waited to kill him, no idea that I was defying those so-called gods to protect him.
I low could I explain to him that the gods he imagined were my Creators, descendants of the human race from the far future, powerful enough to travel through lime, to bend the currents of the continuum to their whim. I had been created by one of them, Aten, cruel and half-mad with the lust for power. The Creators squabbled among themselves like spoiled children, and their disputes were, settled by the blood of mortal men and women.
I have fought and killed tor Aten on countless missions across spacetime, from cave-dwelling tribes to fleets of starships. I have died many times, yet each time he revives me for another grisly task of battle or murder.
He had sent me to this placetime, to be by Arthur’s side. At first I had thought that Aten wanted me to help Arthur succeed in his dream of uniting the Celts so they could drive the Saxons and Angles and other barbarian invaders from The shores of Britain. But no, Aten’s true purpose was to use Arthur briefly then destroy him like a toy that no longer pleased him. And I was to be his assassin, if all else failed.
“My uncle Ambrosius waits to greet us,” Arthur said as I pulled up beside him. His handsome face was wreathed in a brilliant smile.
“You see? The word of your victory at Amesbury has pleased him,” I said.
“Yes, perhaps so,” Arthur agreed.
I glanced up at the flapping banners atop the open castle gale. I could see a group of mon standing there, watching our approach. One of them must have been Ambrosius, Arthur’s uncle, High King of the British Celts.
Arthur’s eyes followed my gaze, but I heard him muttering, “We can drive the barbarians completely out of Britain, drive them away for good if only Ambrosius will trust my plan.”
“He will, my lord, I’m sure,” I said.
Arthur nodded, but it was obvious that his thoughts had turned elsewhere. We rode along in silence up Ute switchbacks of the road, climbing the lull on which Cadbury castle was sited.
“What do you think of the castle, Orion?” Arthur asked at last. “Have you ever seen such mighty walls, such high lowers?”
smiled and kept the truth to myself. “It would be difficult to take by storm, my lord.”
“Difficult!” He laughed, a youthful, boyish laugh. “I could defend Cadbury against all the barbarian hordes for a hundred yea is!”
No, I thought. You won’t be allowed to live that long.
• • •
Ambrosius styled himself High King of the Britons, which meant that many of the petty kingdoms of the isle professed allegiance to him. He had earned that fealty by battling the Saxons and the other invading tribes for many years, building the string of hilltop loris such as Amesbury in the hope of holding the invading barbarians to their beachheads and not allowing them to penetrate into the heartland of Britain.
He had fought other Colts, as well. Celtic Britain was a patchwork of petty “kingdoms,” each ruler jealous of his neighbors, suspicious of the kingdom over the next hill. When the Romans ruled Britain, the tribes had all bowed to Roman law. But once the legion? were withdrawn, the very year that Rome itself was sacked by the Visigoths, the Celts swiftly reverted to their paltry rivalries.
Like his father before him, the Elder Ambrosius, this High King had won his shaky allegiance? as much by the power of his sword over his fellow Celts as the need for all the Cells to unite against the invaders. The allegiances sworn to him were grudging, at best. Only a High King of inflexible will and exceptional power could keep the lesser kings loyal to him.
Now, as we assembled in the castle’s great hall to have audience with the High King, I saw that Ambrosius Aurelianus—as he Styled himself—was getting old. His lifelong struggles against the Saxons and his own Celtic neighbors had taken its toll. He had once been tall and stately, I could see, but the weight of responsibility had bent him and stooped his once-broad shoulders even though he tried to appear dignified in his royal fur-trimmed robes. His hair and beard were gray, nearly white, and thinning noticeably; his face had the pallor of approaching death already upon it.
In contrast, Arthur was strong and straight and vital, practically glowing with youth and bursting with confidence and enthusiasm about the future.
We had all washed off the dust of our journey from Amesbury before this audience with the High King. Sir Bors had leased me, as usual, in his rough way: “Pity the wash bowl isn’t big enough for you to sit in, Orion,” he had said, with mock seriousness. “We all know how you like to bathe yourself, like a fish.”
The other knights had laughed uproariously. My cleanliness was a subject of much humor among them.
But we were all scrubbed, beards and hair trimmed neatly, and wearing our best tunics for Ambrosius. Even young Lancelot, his battle-earned knighthood scarcely a month old, had dressed in his finest Breton linen for this exalted moment.
The audience was largely ceremonial, however. Ambrosius received us in the great hall, with half the castle’s inhabitants thronging the room. The women wore long gowns of rich fabrics, decked with gems and pearls. None of the men wore mail, although they each carried their favorite sword at the hip, many of the scabbards more heavily jeweled than the women.
“A pretty bunch of dandies,” Sir Bors growled under his breath. “They’d be useless in a fight.”
The hall itself was almost as large as Priam’s court in old Troy. Long embroidered tapestries covered most of the rough stone walls, some of them not yet finished, their pictures of battles and hunts incomplete, lacking. Late afternoon sunlight streamed into the hall through the windows set high in the walls. It would take hundreds of candles to light this chamber at night, I thought.
The High King walked slowly, stiffly, through the bowing crowd. A woman walked beside him, dressed all in black and so heavily veiled that we could not see her face. She seemed youthfully slim beneath her floor-length skirts. She kept her gloved hands at her sides. She did not lake Ambrosius’ arm or touch him in any way. Indeed, he scented to keep apart from her quite deliberately.
