The Broken Sword Read online

  "Good and holy," Merlin repeated softly, feeling a shiver. "How long, I wonder, will men's swords be bloodied in the service of what is good and holy?"

  The young man smiled. "Why, until the ghosts of the dead shall return on the day of Resurrection," he said, repeating his catechism. He slung the provisions over his back. "Although I don't imagine that will be for a long time."

  He waved cheerfully and set off toward the Irish Sea, two hundred miles distant.

  "No," Merlin said, tucking his cold hands into the sleeves of his robe. "Not for a long time."

  Galahad was the First to die, and Arthur was the second.

  The Battle of Camlan was the only battle Arthur ever lost. Perhaps he lost it because he fought against his own countrymen. Some believed it was simply where the King had chosen to end his life.

  "Civil war," he said as the first streaks of dawn began to color the sky. "Even the words are unbearable to me.”

  Already Lot's troops, augmented by the soldiers of three other kings in the council, were massing on the ridge overlooking the Camlan River as the King's men took down their tents and donned their armor.

  "When did the gods desert me?" he asked.

  They died before you were ever born, Merlin thought, but he said instead, "They have not, my King. They will fight with you today."

  "That is just what Lot and his creature are telling their men at this moment," Arthur said. "Every king believes the eternal powers to be on his shoulder, as if our small lives were of consequence to any but ourselves."

  "Yours is, Arthur. Long before you became a king, your destiny was written in the stars. You were born to bring mankind into a new age, an age of glory—"

  "Glory!" he spat. The King spread his arms to encompass the battlefield. "This is all we know of glory. To kill our brothers and be killed by them, until the earth runs red with our mingled blood—"

  "My lord!" It was Kay, panting and furious. Gawain was beside him. "A pair of snot-nosed young pups claim to have taken our places with your personal guard. I ask your permission to kill them before the battle, Sire."

  "I say they're spies, come from the army of Rheged," Gawain added.

  "They're not spies," Arthur said. "I gave the order to replace you."

  "But... but..." Kay sputtered, outraged. "We've served with you for thirty years!" .

  "And that is too long." Arthur forced his voice to harden. "I tried to dismiss you gently by sending you on the Quest, but you gave up before a single year had passed."

  "We believed you needed us here, Lord. With war brewing—"

  "Well, it's come, and I shall be Lot's only target during the fighting. Under the circumstances, I would prefer not to be surrounded by incompetent old men."

  "Incom..." Kay's head looked as if it were about to burst. "As children, we lived as brothers together! I was the first you asked to sit at the Round Table with you! Now this, this..."

  Gawain went down on one knee before the King. Kay stared at him in astonishment for a moment; then his face blanked with understanding. "You are doing this to save our lives," he whispered, as if in accusation. "And I won't have it, damn your bones!" His words rose to a shout. Several infantrymen rushed to Arthur's side at the disturbance. "I'll not die in my bed like a woman, do you hear me? I am a sworn Companion of the Round Table of King Arthur, and my place is with you if you lead me to the gates of Hell itself!"

  "Take him to the second ranks," the King commanded one of his officers.

  It took four of them to drag Kay away. "Get your hands off me, you dung-eating nutless swine! I vow I'll tear your worthless sausage out of its casing! Son of a whore..."

  Arthur helped Gawain to his feet. "You were ever valiant, knight, and true," he said quietly. "When this is over, tell Sir Kay I said the same of him."

  Gawain stood before his King with lowered head. Then he nodded curtly before loping away toward his horse.

  The King watched him go. "I tried to surrender, you know. I offered my life to Lot in exchange for keeping the boundaries of the kingdoms as they are. He refused." Arthur looked up at the sky. "It's almost time," he said. "Will you watch the battle?"

  "I will," the Merlin said.

  "Don't judge me too harshly."

  "I cannot judge you at all, because your story has not yet ended."

  Their eyes met. "Good-bye, old friend," Arthur said, embracing the old man.

  Merlin carried the warmth of that last touch with him up to the crest of the high hill, where he stood to watch the man who had been his destiny live out his final moments.

  Mordred, now a man of twenty-four, led the charge from the river, while Lot remained behind in safety.

  From the beginning it was clear that the battle was to pivot upon single combat between Mordred and Arthur. The remainder of their armies fanned out into formation, preparing for the outcome of that first telling strike. Surrounding the King, his personal guard screamed its war cry. The cavalry on either side of them charged.

  Arthur was the first to use horses in battle, Taliesin thought as the two armies flung themselves toward one another. From his vantage point, it all looked very tidy and planned, as if the components of war were wooden toys that moved by themselves for his amusement.

  Yes, the horses. With his mounted knights, Arthur had brought every warring chiefdom in Britain together under one banner within ten years. And not a single tribe had been made to suffer the humiliation that usually follows conquest: After their defeat, Arthur had welcomed each chief into his federation as his personal equal. The country's ten minor kingdoms continued to rule autonomously, with the High King above them only to maintain peace.

  Peace, he thought, was a fragile thing, perhaps too fragile to be entrusted to men.

  The chieftains whose honor and lands Arthur had preserved had forgotten his gift to them. Kings have short memories. But the common people would remember. After war engulfed the land, when the farmers were reduced to eating their dairy cows and the women of the nobility forced to sell their jewels for bread, they would remember Arthur of Britain, the warrior who had been, above all, a man of peace.

  Arthur was killed shortly after the battle joined. A sword seemed to snake through the King's Guard to reach its mark between the slats of armor shielding Arthur's heart. It was Mordred's sword, forged years before in magic to perform its single and unique task.

  Mordred dealt the blow with cold resignation. To kill a man—any man, even the High King—all you need is an assassin who is willing to die, Thanatos once told Morgause, and her son had known this from his earliest years. The throne of the High King was never meant for him. Nor was it meant for Lot, though the king of Rheged was too arrogant ever to have seen the truth. Even Morgause, with all her knowledge of the dark forces, had never guessed in what manner her true wish would be granted.

  But Mordred knew. He was the child of the demon gods, and he knew that he was their tool and nothing more. After he struck the mortal blow to the High King he waited, because his job, like his sword's, was done. He waited for the void that was his home to claim him.

  Lugh Loinnbeimionach, whom not even the King's soldiers could dissuade from fighting in Arthur's personal guard, was beside the King when he fell. With a sound like the roar of a wild beast, Lugh leapt off his horse and onto Mordred.

  With his huge hands wrapped tightly around Mordred's neck, Lugh tumbled to the ground. His thumbs pierced through the very flesh of his King's murderer, so that Mordred's blood spurted into his face with every beat of his heart, strongly at first, then feebly as his life ebbed away.

  Lot's soldiers slashed at Lugh with their broadswords; still, he would not release his quarry, though Mordred was already dead. By the time Lugh finally gave up his spirit, his body had been butchered beyond recognition.

  Nearby lay the sword Excalibur, the gods' sword which Arthur had pulled from a block of stone thirty-eight years before. It had not a drop of blood upon it.

  "The King has fallen!" someone
shouted.

  For a moment, an eerie silence fell over both armies. The horses whinnied and stamped; the very air seemed suddenly to still with the weight of that news.

  Then, from the second rank of Arthur's men, two aging knights, their gray hair shining like silver in the sunlight, galloped forward screaming their ancient war cry, and the rest of the King's army followed them into the bloodiest battle ever held on Britain's soil.

  Kay and Gawain killed more than fifty of Lot's soldiers before they were cut down. The rest of the King's troops fought almost until the last man, even after the armies of Arthur's allies defected to fight with Lot against them.

  When it was done, when the field ran red with blood and Lot's men cheered in victory as they put the wounded remnants of Camelot's army in chains, Merlin remembered Arthur's words.

  This is all we know of glory.

  He made his way down the far side of the hill, toward the place where he would wait for the judgment of whatever gods were left.

  "Glory," he whispered.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Taliesin performed two final tasks before disappearing into the mists of time. The first he accomplished straightaway: He buried Arthur.

  Lot had not shown the High King even the respect of burial, but had left him on the battlefield with the other corpses as food for the crows. Knowing this, the Merlin sent a student of his, a young woman named Nimue, with the first wave of women come to search among the dead for their husbands and fathers.

  Nimue was clever and quick, and not at all squeamish about picking her way through a bloody field strewn with fly-covered corpses. To avoid any notice, she removed the thin circlet of gold that Arthur wore over his brow and tossed it into a coarse bag, then threw a ragged tunic over him to cover his clothing. Through sheer luck she also found his sword, which had been trampled into the mud during the heat of battle.

  While Taliesin prepared the King's body for burial, Nimue polished Excalibur until it shone. "There," she said. "Now it shall be buried with Great Arthur."

  "No, no, that won't do," Taliesin said wearily. "I plan to take every precaution to see that Arthur's grave is not disturbed, but if that should happen... Well, it won't happen."

  After nightfall, just as they were about to leave the cottage disguised as a farmer and his granddaughter going to market with a cartload of vegetables, the old man brought the sword outside.

  "Is that going with us?" Nimue asked, tossing some pumpkins into the wagon.

  Gently he stroked the burnished steel. "No," he said. "I'm going to take it to the middle of the lake and drop it there."

  "The King's sword?" She put her hands on her hips, leaving black fingermarks on her apron. "I don't think he'd have liked that, wizard. It'll get all rusty." She shook her head in censure. "No, not the lake."

  Taliesin sighed. The girl could be quite exasperating at times. "Well, what do you propose I do with it, then?"

  "You must put it back where it belongs. In the stone."

  "The stone? Are you mad? Lot owns Camelot now. We can't very well have Excalibur's hilt poking out of a rock right in front of his nose. He would burn it, or break it, or—"

  "Then cover it over so he can't see it." Nimue bit her grimy fingernails, thinking. "But then, would King Arthur find it when he comes back?"

  Taliesin stared at her, uncomprehending. "Arthur's dead, child," he said quietly. "He's not coming back."

  "Why not? You've told me yourself that the life we know is rarely our last."

  "Confound it, Nimue!" His eyebrows bushed out in irritation. "Haven't you learned anything? One doesn't return to live the same life over again. We grow through different existences. We... Oh, bother." He slapped the sword against his thigh, then stomped off toward the lake.

  "How do you know?" she called out rudely to his retreating back. "You've never been dead. Why, I don't think you have any more idea about this sort of thing than I do."

  His shoulders hunched near his ears. The girl was a horror, simply a horror.

  "Isn't everything possible?" she asked.

  Taliesin stopped in his tracks. He turned around to face her.

  "Well, isn't it?"

  The wizard held the sword up to the moonlight. This is Excalibur, he thought, forged by the ancient gods for the use of one man alone. It would take more than death to separate them.

  "Good heavens, she's right," he whispered.

  Nimue cupped her hands behind her ears. "What did you say?"

  "I said you should get a bucket and clean yourself up," he snapped. "We're not trying to pass ourselves off as pig farmers!''

  Then he ran down the rutted dirt road toward Camelot, the great sword gleaming in his hands.

  The sun had just set two days later, when they reached the western shore of Wales. "What is that?" Nimue pointed to an island barely visible in the evening mist.

  "Mona," Taliesin said. He listened to the silence, remembering the music from the isle of the gods. "The druids once lived there."

  "Druids? You mean they were real? I thought they were imaginary creatures, like fairies and goblins."

  He turned away. Nimue was very young; she had no idea how much her innocent words had hurt him.

  "They were real," he said.

  The ferrymen recognized him. After that first terrible night when he found the island a burned and desecrated ruin, Merlin had returned many times over the years to wipe away the traces of Mona's destruction. He had buried the dead, felled the charred trees, and cleaned the marks of evil from the rocks with sand and ash. Now, more than thirty years after the massacre, the island looked as if no human foot had ever trod upon its shores.

  None of the mainlanders had, surely. They had feared Mona even while the druids had made it their home; after the slaughter, no one except Merlin—whom the ferrymen knew to be the King's wizard, and therefore impervious to the powers of spirits—had ever ventured there.

  "Will you wait till morning, my lord?" the boatman whom Taliesin had selected for the journey to Mona asked.

  "No. We must leave now."

  The ferryman blew air between his teeth. "All right. Seeing it's you."

  If he thought anything of the long wooden box that Nimue and Taliesin struggled to carry between them to the ferry, he did not mention it. Nor would he tell any brigands looking to rob a king's tomb about it. The ferrymen and their families were a close-mouthed lot, aloof and suspicious of strangers. They would guard the Merlin's secret well.

  Taliesin dressed in his best robes for the short journey to Mona, as did Nimue, who wore a gown of shimmering silk. To accommodate the casket, they stood on the prow, still as statues, as the boat floated on the moonlit water toward the island shrouded in mist.

  "Mama, look at Father's boat," a small girl whispered, pointing through a window at the vessel and its strange passengers.

  "Shh." Her mother's arms encircled her protectively. "That is the wizard Merlin and the queen of the fairies, bearing the body of our King to the enchanted isle."

  The little girl blinked. "Did he die, then, good King Arthur?"

  "Aye. But don't you worry, he'll live again. The Merlin will see to that."

  Taliesin and Nimue buried the King beside the Innocent, inside the sacred circle of the druids, and covered the grave with seedlings. By summer, the place would be grown over. Within ten years, it would be filled with trees. Oaks, infused with the magic of the ancient gods.

  "Mother, bring us life from death," Taliesin sang, his voice hoarse with grief.

  Uncomprehending, Nimue repeated the refrain.

  They sang the long-forgotten words of the druids through the night, ten thousand times and more until, at daybreak, the very woods rang with their music.

  Merlin himself did not decide to die for several more years, during which he witnessed the destruction of everything Arthur had worked so hard to build.

  The ten kingdoms disintegrated almost at once. Lot ordered the executions of all his allied kings, and decl
ared their lands forfeit to him. The ones who managed to escape before their arrest made open war on Lot in retribution for his betrayal. The families of the petty kings who were killed rallied what forces they could from among their troops. With the annexation of so much new land, Lot's original two kingdoms became unmanageable as well. Many of the old chiefdoms, melded together temporarily to form the kingdoms of Rheged and Dumnonia, now splintered off to become autonomous, as they had been in the years before Arthur the High King came to power.

  Lot himself lived less than a year after his victory over Arthur. He died in his bed, poisoned, his black tongue lolling between his lips.

  Queen Morgause—for she was, after Lot's death, ruler of Britain—waged a campaign to force the chiefdoms into submission, but they would not give in to a woman, even if it meant the death of every last member of the clans. A number of Rheged's soldiers found their allegiance torn between the queen and the tribal chiefdom to which their families belonged. Usually the chiefdoms won, especially when Morgause ordered her troops to destroy the seats of their own ancient clans. Desertion became commonplace, and what remained of the queen's army turned into an undisciplined mob that fed itself by raiding the farms of its own people, and sometimes of its queen.

  And then the Saxons came.

  They arrived in droves, their incursions into Britain now unchecked. They fought the chiefdoms, the petty kings, and Queen Morgause's army without discrimination. In the eastern part of the country they settled in homesteads and built rough villages which the warring Britons seldom bothered. To supply themselves with tools and food, the Saxons looted whatever they needed from their hosts, riding off with the horses and women that were now theirs for the taking.

  Fires raged in the villages after each Saxon raid. The fields, once ripe with grain, now grew nothing but weeds. Medicine of any kind ceased to exist. Cloth for bandages was no longer woven. Soon it became impossible even to bury the dead. Corpses lined the roads. Whole families lay butchered in their homes, left for predators to eat. The rivers clogged with rotting human bodies; the wells became poisoned with the putrefaction of the dead.