Orion and King Arthur

CHAPTER FIVE Power and Glory

1

“My God,” breathed Lancelot, “they do look like angels.”

Sir Bors, mounted between Lancelot and Arthur, shifted uneasily in his saddle, making the leather creak. “Never seen angels bearing axes before, have you? Or spears.”

“Or swords, either,” said Arthur.

“They swarm like flies on a dung heap,” Bors growled.

Lancelot laughed. “The more we kill, the more the bards will sing of us.”

I was astride my horse just behind Arthur, ready to ride into battle with him even though I was a mere squire. Arthur’s army was pitifully small compared to the host of Angles who were trudging toward us like a restless golden-haired tide advancing across the flat below. We were hardly a hundred knights with their squires and a few dozen footmen recruited grudgingly from nearby villages.

Arthur had maneuvered his mounted knights to the top of the ridge, pinning the tribe of Angles between us and the bend of the river that glittered in the bright sunshine of this beautiful summer morning. The footmen, farm boys for the most part, stood uneasily behind us, already looking frightened. They would run off at the first sign of trouble, I thought.

“Those look like Roman swords, some of them,” Arthur said, totally focused on the approaching warrior throng.

“They’ve looted this region quite thoroughly,” Bors agreed.

We had seen the consequences of the barbarian invasion of this eastern shore of Britain: burned-out homes, ravaged villages, fields given to the torch, crops ruined. Arthur had camped the night before in the crumbling remains of an old Roman villa. Once it had been the home of a prosperous Celtic landowner, a lord whose family had followed Roman ways even after the legions had left Britain. Now it was abandoned, blackened by fire, gutted by barbarian pillagers, the family who once lived in it nothing but rotting bones that the “angels” had not even bothered to bury.

Ever since the Roman legions had abandoned Britain, the barbarian tribes had been invading the island: Saxons in the south, Angles and Jutes along the east coast, even Scots from the far north had crossed the old wall of Hadrian to devastate the northern kingdoms.

“They’re counting our numbers,” Bors muttered.

Arthur leaned forward slightly to pat the neck of his trembling steed. “Hardly any need for that,” he said, his clear tenor voice firm, unafraid. “They can easily see that they outnumber us ten to one.”

“What matter?” said Lancelot, impatiently. “The more there are of them, the more glory for us!”

Arthur smiled at the young knight, so eager for action that he fairly radiated energy. Battle-scarred Bors shook his head in disapproval.

We all have our dreams. Young Lancelot dreamed of glory. Arthur of victory. Ambrosius of power. Me? My dream was to be reunited with Anya, the goddess whom I love, the eternally beautiful immortal from the far future who loves me.

“My helmet, Orion,” Arthur commanded.

I nudged my horse to his side and handed him the plain steel helmet with the nosepiece that projected down from the brows. I had seen much better helms at Philippi and even at Troy, more than two thousand years earlier. But Arthur disdained fancy plumed helmets and elaborate armor. No, that’s not entirely right. He simply never thought about such things. Dux Bellorum he might be, and a natural leader of the volatile, independent-minded Celts. But there was not a shred of vanity in him. Not much out of his teens, scarcely older than glory-driven Lancelot, Arthur went into battle with nothing to distinguish him from the other knights except the bright red dragon emblazoned on his shield.

He slid the helmet over his sandy brown hair. All along the thin line of chain mail–clad horsemen, the other knights donned their helmets, adjusted the straps on their shields, took lances from their squires. Their steeds snuffled and pawed the ground nervously, sensing that bloodshed was near. Down the grassy slope, the horde of Angles were forming up into a battle line. I saw the golden-haired men hefting spears, staring grimly up at us.

One of the bare-chested warriors stepped out in front of the others, bearing a huge axe in one meaty fist and a thick-shafted spear in the other.

“Come on, you dung-eating cowards!” he shouted. “We will chop you to pieces and feast on your livers! I am Alan Axe-Wielder, son of Alan the Bold, grandson of mighty Hengist himself…”

Lancelot asked, “Hengist was a Saxon, wasn’t he? Not an Angle.”

Smiling from under his steel helmet, Arthur said gently, “They all claim to be descended from Hengist.”

“With a bit of luck,” muttered Sir Bors, “the Axe-Wielder will be sitting in hell with old Hengist before the sun goes down.”

The barbarian leader ranted for a long time, working himself and his men into battle fury, boasting of their victories and invincibility, demeaning the prowess and even the masculinity of the Celtic knights.

When at last he drew a long breath, Bors bellowed, “Fools! You face Arthur and his knights, not some poor unarmed farmers and defenseless women. Prepare your souls to meet their maker!”

With that Arthur lifted his lance in his right arm and sang out a single word: “Charge!”

A hundred lances snapped down to point straight at the enemy. A hundred powerful steeds sprang into the gallop, with me and the rest of the squires close behind. Down the grassy slope we thundered like a spearhead of steel hurtling toward the vast surging sea of waiting barbarians.

Small though our numbers, we had an advantage the barbarians did not suspect: the stirrups and spurs that allowed the knights to charge into battle at full tilt and smash into the enemy without slowing down. These Angles had a lethal surprise ahead of them.

They were brave men, though. As we hurtled downslope toward them they gave ground slowly, instinctively backing away from our onrushing horses. But only a few grudging steps. Then they raised their weapons and stood their ground, waiting until we surged into their midst so they could surround us, swarm over us, bring down horse and rider, and hack us to pieces.

It was not to be.

Leaning close to his horse’s mane, his weight on his stirrups, his spear pointed straight at the boastful Alan Axe-Wielder, Arthur led the charge into the host of Angles. I raced behind him, sword in hand, to protect his back. The world seemed to shift into slow motion, time itself stretched so that everything around me appeared to move in sluggish, dreamlike lethargy. I saw the horses pounding down the grassy slope as if they were drifting through a soup of thick, clear molasses, clods of earth thrown up by their hooves floating languorously through the air.

The charging knights took on a wedge-shaped formation, Arthur at its apex, Lancelot and Bors at his sides. They struck the barbarians at full gallop. Arthur’s lance took the Axe-Wielder full in the chest, shattering his shield, lifting him completely off his feet. He looked terribly surprised as his rib cage caved in and his life’s blood spurted out of him.

Wrenching his lance free without slowing down a fraction, Arthur drove his steed through the shocked barbarian line, bowling over warriors too slow to get out of his way. Following close behind him, I hacked left and right at any man foolhardy enough to try to get at Arthur from behind.

The knights had blasted right through the heart of the barbarian formation. Where the Axe-Wielder and his best men had stood a moment ago, there was now no man standing, nothing but shattered bodies littering the blood-soaked grass. The two wings of the barbarian host stood in shocked disbelief, separated, stunned, too amazed to either charge or run away.

Arthur wheeled his mounted knights to the left and we charged into that crowd of milling, dazed warriors. In truth, they seemed petrified, disorganized, the heart torn out of them.

Yet they stood and fought, though little good it did them. The knights smashed into them, a hurtling wave of steel dealing death with lance and sword. Before the stunned, disheartened warriors on the other side of the field could make up their minds to rush at the mounted knights, their brethren were smashed, disemboweled, scattered like dandelion seeds in a gale. Those that still could ran, dropping shields and spears and racing away as fast as their legs could carry them, howling with terror, splashing into the river, tripping, falling, floundering in the cold water, mad to escape onrushing death.

Lancelot drove after them, his sword licking the lives from the fleeing warriors. No, they were no longer warriors; they were terrified men trying to run away, desperate to save their lives.

With a sudden roar, our footmen came running down the ridge, armed with swords, sickles, clubs, knives. The river began to run red as they hurled themselves, bellowing with pent-up fury, on the men who had looted their homes, killing and raping and burning.

“Come back!” Arthur shouted after Lancelot. “Regroup!”

But Lancelot was chasing down the hapless barbarians, his steed splashing into the river alongside the vengeance-maddened footmen. Arthur wheeled his knights around to face the remaining barbarian warriors who were starting a ragged charge on foot toward us.

“Get back here!” bellowed Sir Bors, in a voice that could be heard across eternity.

Lancelot reined in his horse, turned around, and cantered back toward Arthur. His squire trotted to him and handed him a fresh lance. The belly of Lancelot’s horse was red with barbarian blood; the knight’s legs were spattered with blood up to his thighs. Even the golden eagle emblem on his shield was barely visible, covered with blood and dripping mud.

Once Arthur got his formation turned to face the remainder of the once-boastful Angles, the onrushing warriors slowed and then stopped altogether. From my vantage point slightly behind Arthur I could see the consternation and fear on their faces. For a long moment they simply stood there, mouths open in shocked disbelief, eyes staring wildly. Arthur and his knights sat on their snorting, blowing mounts. Neither side moved, except for a few of the barbarians in the rear of their undisciplined mass, who slowly, silently backed away and then began to slink toward the river and the thick woods beyond.

Lancelot trotted up and, without stopping, spurred his horse into a charge.

“Wait!” shouted Arthur. But Lancelot was already galloping at the barbarians.

In truth, their host was no longer an army, it was a cowed, beaten mob. They were melting away; one by one at first, then by the twos and threes, by the fives and tens, they fled for their lives as Lancelot charged at them, alone. Yet there were still dozens of armed warriors standing their ground, many scores of men who were not running away.

“Damned fool!” Bors groused. “One man alone, they’ll swarm all over him.”

Arthur looked grim, watching Lancelot’s solitary charge. The other knights seemed just as stunned as the barbarians; they all turned to Arthur for his command. Drawing Excalibur from its sheath, he shouted, “Charge!” once more.

Again we thundered into action. Seeing us all galloping after Lancelot, the remaining barbarians lost what was left of their nerve. They bolted and ran, scattering everywhere like mice trying to flee a hungry cat. Little good it did them. We caught them at the river’s edge and slaughtered them. Blood and bones and severed arms, heads, bodies split from shoulder to crotch littered the grass and turned the river into a charnel stream.

At last Arthur shouted, “Enough! Enough!”

Lancelot was in the river again, up to his horse’s belly, hacking away at any man left standing. Arthur had to splash in alongside him and grip his sword arm.

“I said enough,” Arthur repeated.

For a long moment Lancelot simply stared at his commander. Then he sheathed his reddened sword and swept off his helmet. He was grinning, white teeth showing, eyes asparkle.

There were no barbarians left standing. The few who had escaped were fleeing into the woods on the other side of the river. Our footmen, ferocious in victory, were merrily slitting the throats of the wounded and picking their carcasses clean of weapons, helmets, boots, even their leather trousers.

“The crows will feast ’til they burst,” said Bors, surveying the bloody scene.

“A great victory!” Lancelot shouted as he and Arthur rode side by side out of the river. “A wonderful victory! The barbarians will run all the way back to their own country, over the sea!”

Arthur was more thoughtful. “You mustn’t go dashing off on your own. You could have been killed.”

“But I wasn’t!”

Bors interjected, “Only because we came up behind you, lad. You’ve got to keep your head in battle—or lose it.”

Lancelot laughed and trotted away.

“He’s going to be trouble,” Bors said to Arthur.

Without taking his eyes from Lancelot’s retreating back, Arthur said softly, “He’s young. He’ll learn better.”

“Or he won’t get much older,” groused Sir Bors.

2

That night we camped in a clearing in the forest across the river, upwind from the battlefield. Arthur sent a dozen mounted scouts to find where the remnants of the barbarian army had fled.

“Their main camps are close by the coast,” he told us, over the dying embers of the campfire. “Their warriors must have headed that way.”

“Probably along the old Roman road,” said Gawain. “It’s the straightest route to the coast.” Gawain was one of the few knights who’d been wounded in the fight. His thigh had been sliced slightly by a spear. Laughingly, he claimed he’d taken the spear thrust to protect his horse.

Lancelot was still glowing with excitement. “Right now, the few barbarian survivors are probably telling their fellows how we crushed them. By tomorrow they’ll be climbing into their boats and leaving Britain forever.”

Arthur smiled tiredly at the young knight. “I wish it would be so,” he said.

It was not.

I stretched out on my blanket, close to Arthur, my sword at my side, and closed my eyes to sleep.

Instead, I found myself standing on a windswept hilltop bathed in the cold silver glow of a gibbous moon.

Anya, I thought, my pulse racing. She’s come to meet me here.

“Not your precious Anya,” said the haughty voice I knew only too well. I turned and saw Aten stepping out of the shadows of the sighing, wind-tossed trees.

He styles himself the Golden One and, truly, he is magnificent to look upon. Even in this moonlit night he radiated light and strength. Golden hair, tawny eyes, the body of a Greek god, Aten was dressed in a military uniform of purest white, with gold epaulets and trim.

“You continue in your pitiful efforts to thwart me, Orion,” he said, a contemptuous smile on his lips that was half a sneer.

“I protect Arthur as best I can,” I replied.

With a condescending shake of his head, Aten went on, “How little you understand the forces you are dealing with. But then, how could you understand? I did not build such knowledge into you.”

“Teach me, then. You claim to be my Creator: educate your creature.”

He laughed in my face. “Teach you? Can a mule be taught spacetime mechanics? Can a flatworm learn how to manipulate the continuum?”

I said nothing. I longed to smash in his smug, gloating face, but I was powerless to move against him.

“The game grows more interesting, Orion, but it can end in only one way. Arthur and his Celts must be defeated by the invaders. That is what must be.”

“Because you want it that way.”

“Yes! That is my desire. I will not allow you or anyone else to stand against me.”

“Others of the Creators do not agree with you,” I pointed out.

“That is none of your affair,” he snapped.

“Anya is against you.”

He bristled. “Anya is far from here, Orion, devoting her misguided energies to another aspect of the continuum, another nexus that must be resolved properly.”

“Another part of your game.”

“It is hardly a game,” Aten said sharply. “Because of you and your oafish stubbornness, this nexus here in Britain is in danger of unraveling. If it does, the entire continuum will be shaken to its foundations, whole worldlines will crumble—”

“And you will lose your power,” I interrupted. One glance at his face, though, told me what he dared not say. “You will lose your existence!” I realized.

“So will Anya,” he answered. “So will all we Creators be banished from existence. The Earth, the human race, everything will disappear totally and forever, wiped clean from the continuum as if we had never existed in the first place.”

I stared at him. Then I heard myself say, “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe, Orion,” Aten replied, totally serious. “You claim to love Anya. If you continue to protect Arthur you will be killing her, just as if you drove your dagger through her heart.”

“But—”

He laughed bitterly. “No arguments, Orion. No matter what you do, it hardly matters. I have another assassin ready to kill Arthur, and the jest is that he hasn’t the faintest inkling that he is an assassin.”

“What do you mean?”

But Aten was no longer there. He winked out, like a light suddenly turned off. Like a hologram projection, I thought. Yet his sardonic laughter echoed in my mind.

Could it be true? By protecting Arthur, was I destroying Anya, the goddess I love, the only member of the Creators who showed the slightest concern for the human race?

And someone else was going to murder Arthur? Someone who doesn’t even know that he will kill the Dux Bellorum?

I paced slowly along the crest of the hill as the moon edged lower in the night sky, trying to sort it all out, trying to decide what was true, what my course of action should be. At one point, Aten had seemed almost to be pleading with me. Was he lying? Was he trying to manipulate me, using my love for Anya as a way of controlling me?

The Creators had godlike powers, but they were actually humans from the distant future, humans who had learned to wield the forces of spacetime to travel at will across the continuum. They had interfered in human affairs all through history and even earlier, always trying to bend the worldlines to suit their whims. Aten had created me and others, he claimed, to do his bidding at placetimes where the continuum comes to a focal point, a nexus that would determine the worldlines for eons to come.

Like spoiled children, the Creators often bickered among themselves. Their disagreements brought wars and disasters to humankind, their disputes were settled by our blood.

It was a cosmic irony. These so-called Creators were the descendants of ordinary humans such as Arthur and the men and women of this age. We had created them, in truth. They are our distant progeny. Yet they reached back through time to try to control us.

For hours I walked along that grassy hilltop as the wind from the sea tossed the leafy boughs of the trees and set them to groaning plaintively. The moon went down and I could see the spangled glory of the heavens, stars glittering like jewels, the Great Bear and its smaller brother, the Chained Princess and Perseus the Hero and the majestic stream of the Milky Way. The constellation of Orion was not in sight, though. And Anya was far away, beyond my reach, perhaps forever.

Then different lights caught my eye. Down on the seashore below the hill, fires were burning. Campfires. This was one of the places where the barbarians had built a settlement for themselves. I could see their boats pulled up on the beach, black against the starlit sand. Huts and larger buildings thatched with straw dotted the shore. The barbarians had built a village for themselves, a town for their families and flocks. There were even fields of food crops within easy walking distance of the huts.

The barbarians were not piling into the boats, as Lancelot had predicted. They were nowhere near the boats. They had built this village to live in permanently, and they had no intention of leaving. As I peered down at the starlit scene below me, I saw that they were digging a huge ditch across the old Roman road that led to their settlement.

They were preparing to fight.

3

I woke with a start, back at Arthur’s camp. The first hazy gray hint of dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern sky. Venus hung in the west like a gleaming diamond.

What I had seen during the night had been no dream, I knew. Aten had translated me to the coastal base of the Angles. Why, I did not understand. But it was clear to me that the barbarians had no intention of fleeing Britain. They were digging in, preparing to fight against Arthur’s advancing army.

After I had eaten with the other squires I sought out Arthur. He was sitting under a massive oak tree, alone, looking lost in thought.

“May I speak to you, lord?” I asked.

Arthur smiled boyishly at me and patted the mossy ground. “Sit here, Orion, and don’t be so formal. We are all companions here.”

“It’s about the enemy,” I said, sitting beside him.

“The scouts all report that they are fleeing along the Roman road toward the coast.”

“True enough,” I agreed. “The few survivors from yesterday’s battle are retreating. But their brethren are digging defensive works along that road.”

“Digging?”

“Trenches and earthworks. To stop you.”

He looked puzzled. “How do you know this?”

“I saw it last night.”

His perplexed frown deepened. “But you were here in camp with us last night.”

I thought quickly. “The Lady of the Lake showed it to me.” It wasn’t much of a lie. Anya had appeared to us both in the past; under the guise of the Lady of the Lake she had given Arthur his sword Excalibur.

“She was here?” Arthur gasped. “In this camp?” He looked all around at the forest surrounding our clearing. Even though it was full morning, the woods were deep and shadowy, thick with brush, dark and mysterious enough to imagine all kinds of spirits and supernatural beings lurking nearby, enchantments and wizards and magic spells.

“She took me to the Angles’ settlement on the coast,” I said, trying to skirt my half-truth.

“You saw them digging trenches,” Arthur said, sounding dismayed.

“Yes,” I answered. “They were not loading their boats and preparing to leave.”

He smiled grimly. “Lancelot will be disappointed.”

“I imagine so.”

“On the other hand, Lancelot will probably be glad for another chance for glory.” His smile faded completely.

4

Lancelot was delighted that his prediction had failed to come true. All during our march along the old Roman road he chattered happily about the coming battle.

“We’ll crush them like eggshells,” he said. “The bards will sing of Arthur and his knights for a thousand years.”

He was right about the fame that he and Arthur would win. Poets chronicled the deeds of Arthur and his knights for much more than a mere thousand years, I knew, although the heart of their romances dealt with Lancelot’s falling in love with Arthur’s queen. As we rode along toward the next battle, though, I began to realize that if Aten had his way Arthur would soon be killed and his story snuffed out. No bard would sing of the deeds of a young Dux Bellorum killed in battle before he was old enough to grow a full beard. Arthur would be forgotten, his bones and his legend decayed into dust.

Worse yet, Arthur might be assassinated, murdered by one of his own people. Would Lancelot be Aten’s killer? Certainly I would not. What about crafty old Merlin, still back at Cadbury castle with Ambrosius? The High King had agreed to keep the Saxons along Britain’s southern shores in check while Arthur flung his knights against the Angles and Jutes in the east. Might Ambrosius allow the new Saxon leader to bring his host up behind us, surrounding Arthur’s knights between his Saxons and the Angles and Jutes?

No, I thought, Ambrosius wanted Arthur to succeed. Arthur was now the right arm of the High King; it would be criminally stupid for Ambrosius to work against Arthur.

And yet … the thought nagged at me. Merlin was more than a wizened old faker, I was sure of that. There was an intelligence and purpose in those shaggy-browed eyes of his. I wondered, again, if he might be one of the Creators in disguise. Not Aten, of course. But one of the others, come to this placetime to manipulate this nexus in the continuum.

My mind swirled with the possibilities as we rode along the paving stones of the old Roman road. Straight as a ramrod it ran, through forest thick with huge oaks and yews and elms. To these uneducated Britons the straight, paved roads and solid stone buildings of the Romans seemed like the works of gods. They did not know how to accomplish such engineering feats so they assumed the structures were beyond human capabilities. What foolishness, I thought. The Creators played on that credulity, just as I hoaxed Arthur into believing the Lady of the Lake had transported me to the Angles’ settlement in the night.

The Creators enjoyed being worshipped by their primitive ancestors. If these humans knew what their so-called gods really were, it would make them sick with disgust and shame.

The thick woods on either side of the road made excellent cover for an ambush, I thought. Yet Arthur led his knights along the road without a worry. They rode two or three abreast, each knight dutifully followed by his squire, the whole procession plodding slowly along the paving stones. Our baggage train and footmen followed in the rear.

We had gained dozens more footmen. Those who had been with us in yesterday’s battle now carried swords stripped from the barbarian dead. Some wore helmets and almost all of them had boots or some sort of footgear, probably for the first time in their lives. News of our victory had almost doubled their number. Most of them were Christians, although a few still clung to the older Celtic religion. Christian or not, they talked among themselves of slaughtering the enemy, dreamed of looting the barbarians and raping their women just as the barbarians had done to their own.

We trailed along the road all through the long, hot day. The lofty trees shaded us most of the time. I kept peering into the underbrush, worried about ambush. Dimly I remembered another life, in a distant jungle where every bend in the trail was a danger. I tried to laugh my worries away. At least the enemy doesn’t have land mines and explosive booby traps in this age.

5

Midway through the second day we were halted by an entrenchment. The barbarians had torn up the road and dug a six-foot-deep ditch across it. Beyond the ditch was an earthen mound about six feet high, studded with spearheads. It reminded me of the trench and earthwork rampart that Agamemnon and his Achaeans had thrown up to protect their camp on the shore of Troy. These barbarians had no better military craft than the Greeks and Trojans of some two millennia earlier.

Arthur brought our column to a halt and summoned me with a beckoning hand.

“You said their trench was near their settlement on the coast,” he muttered.

Nodding, I replied, “They were building one there in great haste, my lord. This must be another.”

His youthful face knotted into a frown. “No telling how many such fortifications they’ve built along the road.”

Gawain, at Arthur’s other side, suggested, “We could send scouts through the woods to spy out how many of these ditches they’ve dug.”

“That would take days,” Arthur said. “We’d have to camp here and do nothing while they could slip through the forest and surround us.”

“Let them attack us,” Gawain replied. “It will be easier to kill them in the open than to try to charge against that ditch and wall.”

Bors pushed his horse between Arthur and me. “There’s forage enough here for the mounts. We can wait a day or two. Give the steeds a needed rest.”

Lancelot joined the conference, his face eager. But he was too young to speak his mind in the presence of veterans such as Bors and Gawain. Yet it was clear that he was bursting to have his say.

“I don’t like to wait,” Arthur said. “Every day we sit idle is a day that the barbarians can use to strengthen their defenses.”

“Then let’s charge them!” Lancelot blurted. “One strong charge and we’ll be over their earthen mound before they know what hit them!”

Bors shook his head. “The horses can’t jump that ditch. And they won’t charge those spear points. They’ve got too much sense for that.”

“Then charge them on foot,” Lancelot said, without an instant’s hesitation.

Bors gave him a withering stare. “The horses are smarter than you are, lad.”

Lancelot was totally unfazed. Turning to Arthur, he said, “I will lead a foot charge, my lord, if you will permit it.”

“No,” Arthur replied immediately. Then he added, “Not yet.”

He spent the rest of the day studying the earthwork. We saw barbarian warriors poking their helmeted heads up above the rampart now and then. Once in a while they called to us, taunting us to charge against them. At one point, when Arthur rode slowly along the edge of the trench, a bowman popped up from behind the rampart and fired an arrow at him. I was afoot behind Arthur’s horse, holding a brace of spears for him. My senses instantly went into overdrive. I saw the arrow gliding lazily toward Arthur, flexing slightly as it flew. Hefting one of the spears, I threw it at the arrow, grazing it just enough to deflect it away from Arthur.

It thudded into the ground at the horse’s feet, making the mount rear and whinny in alarm. Arthur held his seat, barely. I imagine if he didn’t have stirrups he would have been thrown. The bowman was still standing atop the parapet, knocking another arrow. I threw the other spear at him with all the force I could muster. As he looked up it caught him in the face. He screamed hideously and disappeared behind the earthwork.

Arthur had his steed under control by then. He stared at me, wide-eyed.

“You…” He glanced at the arrow embedded in the ground at his mount’s hooves and then at the barbarians’ earthen parapet, gauging the distance.

“We should call you Orion Strong-Arm,” Arthur said, clear astonishment in his voice.

I shrugged modestly, trotted to the first spear and picked it up, then followed Arthur back to our camp, safely out of bow range from the barbarian entrenchment.

As the sun dipped westward, throwing long shadows through the forest, Arthur called his most senior knights together at his cook fire. Footmen had scouted through the woods on either side of the road. Their reports were not encouraging. There were hundreds of Angles behind the entrenchment and more coming up the road from the coast.

“We could go around it,” Arthur suggested, “through the forest, and attack them from the flanks.”

Sir Bors pointed out, “Those woods are too thick for horses. We’d have to attack them on foot.”

“Their numbers would overwhelm us,” said Sir Kay, gloomily.

“That young hothead Lancelot wants to charge them straight on,” Bors complained.

“On foot?” Kay looked aghast.

Around and around the discussion went, while the sun set and a deep moonless dark fell over the woods. I heard an owl hoot, and a moaning wind began tossing the leafy branches of the trees. It was easy to understand how these people could believe deep forests such as this to be haunted.

The conference broke up with nothing decided. Arthur walked slowly away from the campfire. I followed him at a respectful distance.

“Orion,” he called to me without turning around.

I came up to his side.

“I must decide, Orion. We must find a way to beat these barbarians. My mission is to drive them out of Britain. We can’t retreat and leave them here unharmed.”

“Then we must fight them,” I said.

“On foot? They’ll slaughter us.”

We were standing in the middle of the paved road, looking up toward the enemy’s position. They had lit big bonfires on either end of their earthwork, so sneaking across the ditch and up the rampart for a surprise attack was out of the question.

“Let me scout their position,” I suggested. “Perhaps I can find a weakness that the footmen overlooked.”

Bleakly, he nodded. Then he murmured, “I wish Merlin were here. He’d know what to do.”

Perhaps, I thought. Or perhaps Merlin would lead you on to your death.

6

I slipped into the woods, armed with nothing but a sword and the dagger that Odysseos had given me at Troy, strapped to my thigh. The underbrush was thick, the going slow and difficult. It would be impossible to sneak up on the barbarians in silence.

Unless … I crouched in the deepest shadows of the bushes and squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to another vantage point. If Aten and his so-called Creators can move across space and time at their whim, why can’t I?

It was useless. No matter how I strained, no matter how hard I concentrated, I did not budge from my spot in the underbrush. If only Anya were near enough to contact, I thought. She could help me.

“I will help you, my darling Orion,” her silvery voice whispered.

“Anya!”

“I am far away, far distant in time and space,” she told me, her voice so faint I wondered if I were imagining it. “I cannot maintain contact for very long, beloved.”

Just to hear her voice was more joy than I had known in ages.

“Close your eyes, Orion,” she commanded gently. “Close your eyes and see.”

I pressed my eyes shut once again. And suddenly I was high above the forest, looking down as a hawk would, as an eagle soaring among the clouds. I saw the thin straight line of the Roman road, the barbarians’ ditch with Arthur’s camp on one side of it and the enemy’s on the other. Higher and higher I rose. There were three more trenches dug across the road, with several miles’ distance between each one. The final trench was just before the Angles’ village on the coast.

Barbarians they might be, but they understood the value of a defense in depth. Arthur and his knights might fight their way past one of those barriers, perhaps even two of them. But at what cost? How many knights would Arthur have left after two such assaults? How many footmen would remain loyal to him after such bloodlettings?

I opened my eyes and was back in the underbrush.

“Anya, what can I do?” I asked, hardly voicing the words.

There was no answer. Anya was gone. She had given me all the help she could; now the contact between us was broken. Instead I heard in my mind the scornful laughter of Aten, telling me without words that Arthur’s quest to drive the barbarians out of Britain was doomed to dismal failure.

7

But Arthur did not think so. He listened grimly as I described the series of fortifications that the barbarians had dug along the road leading to the Angles’ coastal base. When he asked how I could have seen so much in a single night, I told him that the Lady of the Lake showed it to me. That was not far from the truth.

The two of us walked alone through the deep woods that morning. The rest of Arthur’s army lolled in camp, content to rest for the day. The Angles were not resting, though; they were digging, deepening their entrenchments, strengthening their defenses.

After my report Arthur walked slowly through the woods for what seemed like hours, silent, thinking, weighing the possibilities. It was cool in the deep shadows of the forest. The trees formed an almost continuous green canopy high above us, making it difficult to tell how far the sun had moved. The underbrush was so thick that we had to walk slowly. Horsemen could never charge through here.

At length, Arthur asked me, “Where are their fighting men, Orion?”

I blinked, trying to remember what I had seen. “There were many more campfires at this first barrier than at any of the others—except for the last one, near their village.”

He nodded. “Most of their fighting men are here, then, ready to face us. If we break through their defenses, they will fall back along the road to the next barrier.”

“That makes sense. The other trenches are held only weakly at present. The people digging near their village must be old men, boys, perhaps even women.”

“Their defenses are of no use if they have no warriors to man them,” Arthur said.

I looked at his youthful face with new respect. He understood the fundamental truth of war: destroy the enemy’s army.

“It will be a costly battle, my lord,” I warned. “It could be a Pyrrhic victory.”

His brows rose questioningly.

“Pyrrhus was a Greek king who fought the Roman republic in southern Italy. He won many battles, but always his own casualties were enormous. Once, when an aide congratulated him on beating the Romans again, he said, ‘Another victory like this one and I’ll have no army left.’”

Arthur smiled. “Yes, I see. Still, it must be done.”

I agreed. “If we must attack them, then it must be in a manner that prevents them from retreating to their next fortification.”

“That’s the problem. How can we accomplish that?”

I remembered another battle, at a place called Cannae. I had served the doomed Hannibal in that era.

8

It took the rest of the day to get the knights to agree to the plan that Arthur and I had hatched.

Bors was dead set against the plan, of course. “Divide your forces? Depend on the footmen? It’s insane!”

Gawain was doubtful. “How can we get through those woods? They’re impassable.”

Patiently, Arthur said, “You walk your horse through the underbrush. It can be done.”

“Walk?” Gawain looked shocked. “I’m a knight, not a footman.”

Arthur laughed. “You’ll fight on horseback, never fear.”

Once again I marveled that these impulsive, individualistic Celtic knights could agree on anything. Dux Bellorum was Arthur’s title, but it meant nothing by itself. None of the knights felt the slightest compulsion to accept authority or follow orders that he did not like. Arthur had to win them over to his view; he could not command them, he had to persuade them. Even the footmen could melt away, leaving the army and trudging on back to their farmsteads or villages whenever they decided to.

Lancelot was the only one who agreed without argument. He was avid for battle.

“Let me be in the forefront of the attack!” he pleaded. “On foot or ahorse, I’ll make those barbarians feel the sharpness of my sword!”

In truth, it was Lancelot who won Arthur’s argument for him. He was so eager, so willing to plunge into battle, that he shamed Gawain and the older men into a sullen agreement.

It was late in the day by the time all the knights, one by one, gave the grudging nod to Arthur’s plan.

“Very well, then,” said Arthur at last. “We spend this night preparing for an attack at dawn.”

One by one, he clasped each of them by the shoulders, knowing that they might never see each other again. The last one he embraced was young Lancelot.

“Please let me lead the frontal assault,” Lancelot begged.

“That’s the most dangerous job,” Arthur said gently. “There’s a very good chance that you’ll be killed.”

“But it brings the most glory! What does it matter if I’m killed? My deeds will live forever!”

Achilles had felt that way, I remembered. Until an arrow crippled him.

Arthur looked the youth in the eye. “Leading the frontal assault is my task, my responsibility.”

Before the crestfallen Lancelot could reply, he added, “But you can be at my right hand, my friend.”

I thought Lancelot would explode with joy.

9

All that night the men deployed, most of the knights and all of the footmen moving off into the dark, scary forest as quietly as they could. The one brown-robed friar we had with us, a spindly, lean-faced priest named Samson, blessed kneeling men until his arm grew stiff with fatigue. Others knelt in the underbrush and prayed silently before they set off. Many of the knights held their longswords before them as they prayed, the sword’s hilt serving as a makeshift crucifix for them. A strange sort of symbol for the Prince of Peace, I thought. But these were savage times, and these men were fighting for their homes and families.

So are the barbarians, said a voice in my mind. They have made their homes here in Britain.

I tried to get some sleep as I stretched out on the mossy ground near the dying embers of a campfire. Much of Arthur’s plan—my plan, really—depended on the knights and footmen being in their proper places when the sun came up. Would they be in place?

An owl hooted somewhere in the woods. The totem of Athena, I recalled from another life, although in many cultures the owl was seen as a symbol of death. The night was still, hardly a breeze. A wolf snarled out there in the darkness. Fireflies danced to and fro in the underbrush. Even though I knew better, I almost thought the woods to be haunted, the habitat of elves and fairies and darker, more dangerous spirits.

I drifted off to sleep, only to find myself suspended in a featureless golden glow, floating as if in a weightless limbo.

“The end is near for Arthur,” said Aten’s haughty voice.

I turned, spun around weightlessly, but could see nothing except the glowing golden radiance that surrounded me.

“Show yourself,” I said.

“Giving commands to your Creator?” He laughed. “Really, Orion, I ought to let you die with Arthur.”

“Neither of us will die,” I said.

“Arthur will. And once he does, your usefulness in this placetime comes to an end.”

“I won’t murder him for you.”

Aten’s golden form took shape out of the glowing mist. Now he wore a formfitting uniform of golden mesh.

“You won’t have to assassinate Arthur,” said Aten. “Young Lancelot will do your job for you.”

“Lancelot?” I couldn’t believe it. “He’d never kill Arthur. He adores the ground Arthur walks on.”

“Yes, of course he does. And to show how much he adores Arthur he will be more daring than any knight. He will charge against the barbarians’ spears, all courage and no fear. And Arthur will have to rush in beside him, won’t he? Arthur would never stand back and watch the young hothead get himself killed in his foolish recklessness.”

I saw it in my mind’s eye: Lancelot charging blindly, Arthur rushing in to protect him, the barbarians swarming around them.

“Not while I live,” I muttered. “As long as I have breath in me, I will protect Arthur.”

Aten smirked. “Then you’ll have to die, too.”

I wanted to reach out and throttle him, but before I could lift a finger I found myself back in Arthur’s camp in the gray misty light of early dawn. Already I could hear the woodsmen’s axes chunking into thick-boled trees.

10

The tree trunks were rough and heavy. There was no time to split them or smooth them off. The barbarians must have heard the trees being felled and were wondering what we were up to; it was far too much chopping to be simply for firewood.

Arthur had kept only two dozen knights for this frontal assault on the entrenchment. The others were sifting through the woods, hoping to cut off the enemy’s retreat.

If the enemy retreated. A dozen knights plus their squires and a few teenaged footmen was hardly an overwhelming force to pit against the entrenched Angles.

I was gripping one side of a massive tree trunk as we lugged it straight up the road toward the ditch and embankment behind it. I could see barbarian warriors watching us, their horned helmets bobbing up and down behind their earthwork. They must be laughing, I thought, as I sweated with the heavy load. It was too heavy for us to run with it. We trudged up the road, our arms feeling as if they would be pulled out of their sockets by the weight of the trunk.

The knights walked beside us, protecting us a little with their shields. No one said a word. Not even the birds or mammals of the woods made a sound. All I could hear was the steady labored trudging of our boots and the heaving, weary grunts from the squires and footmen toting the tree trunk.

“Come on!” shouted a golden-braided warrior, climbing to the top of the embankment. He waved to us. “Come on to your certain deaths! We welcome you.”

Arthur, walking beside me, drew Excalibur from its sheath with a silvery hiss. On the other side of the trunk Lancelot pulled his sword and behind me I heard the other knights drawing theirs.

We were within arrow range of the trench. Barbarian bowmen began pelting us. My senses went into overdrive and I could see the arrows soaring lazily toward us. One thunked into the trunk inches from me. Arthur extended his shield to cover me, exposing himself to their fire.

Is this how he will die, I asked myself, trying to protect me? How Aten will laugh if it happens that way.

Now they were throwing spears. I saw everything in slow motion, but although I could easily see arrows and spears coming my way, I could not dodge them. Not unless I dropped the tree trunk. Arthur caught an arrow on his shield. A spear hit the ground at his feet and clattered off the Roman paving stones.

We were within a few paces of the ditch’s edge. I heard a man scream with sudden pain, and the trunk nearly twisted out of my grip.

“Now!” Arthur bellowed.

With every atom of strength in me, I ran down into the ditch, lugging the trunk with me. The other squires followed my lead, although two more of them went down with arrows through their bodies.

We rammed the tree trunk against the embankment. Most of the squires ducked under it for protection as the knights clambered atop it and rushed straight across the ditch to the top of the embankment. I drew my sword and climbed up the sloping earthwork to be with Arthur.

Lancelot dashed forward, straight onto the crest of the embankment, where the barbarian warriors waited with their axes and swords. Arthur was rushing up behind him. He caught an axe thrust on his shield and took off the arm of the axe-wielder with a stroke from Excalibur. The man shrieked as he fountained blood.

I dove in beside him as the other knights rushed into the fight, slashing and killing with the maddened fury that rises when blood begins to flow. Sir Emrys took a spear in his gut but sliced out his killer’s throat before he died. The knights were forming a wedge of steel, slowly pushing the barbarians back, down the rear slope of their embankment. We were outnumbered by perhaps a hundred to one, but the knights—protected by their chain mail and shields—were weaving a web of death with their dripping swords.

Lancelot pushed deeper into the swarming mass of barbarian warriors, his sword a blur, men screaming and stumbling as he stroked the life out of them. Arthur struggled to keep up with him, wielding Excalibur like a bloody buzz saw that took off arms, heads, split bare-chested warriors from shoulder to navel.

I tried to stay close behind Arthur but he and Lancelot were driving deeper into the mass of roaring, screaming warriors and I had my hands full keeping barbarians off their backs. More and more of them came swarming up the embankment, eager to get to the handful of knights. The whole barbarian army seemed to be surging toward us.

Lancelot’s squire went down, an axe buried in his skull, and Arthur stumbled over the body.

I saw it all in agonizing slow motion: Arthur falling forward, thrusting his shield out in front of him to support himself as he went down. A huge barbarian, blond braids flying as he swung his axe in a mighty two-handed chop at Arthur’s unprotected back. Lancelot not more than three feet away, but with his back turned to Arthur, hacking other barbarians to pieces. And me, separated from Arthur now by a good five yards, with half a dozen bloodied fighters between us.

“Arthur!” I screamed, driving through a flailing wall of fighting men.

Lancelot turned at the sound of my shout. Without an instant’s hesitation he swung his shield toward the descending axe. I cut down two men trying to stand before me and pushed on toward Arthur, knowing I could not get to him in time. Lancelot caught the axeman’s forearm with the edge of his shield, knocking the blow away from Arthur. His axe thudded harmlessly into the ground as Lancelot split his skull, helmet and all, with a tremendous slash of his sword.

Arthur got to one knee as I reached him. A spearman tried to get Arthur, but I yanked the spear out of his hands and drove my sword into his belly.

At the top of the earthwork we could see the entire mass of the barbarian army, hundreds of them rushing up the dirt slope to get at us, eager to wipe out our small force of knights and squires. There were far too many of them for us to have any hope of surviving.

It was like fighting against a tidal wave. We stood at the crest of the rampart and fought for what seemed like hours. No matter how many we killed, more warriors charged up the slope at us. Knights and squires went down as the barbarians shrieked their battle cries and surged up at us with their spears and axes and swords.

We were only a handful to begin with. Our numbers were being whittled away. We slew three, four, seven men for every one we lost. But for every barbarian who went down, ten more charged up the earthen ramp at us. It was only a matter of time before we all were killed, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, three hundred men against an army. And we were far fewer than three hundred.

Then it happened. A trumpet blast came up from the woods and with a bellowing roar the bulk of Arthur’s knights and footmen charged out from the trees on both sides of the road, into the flanks of the surging torrent of barbarians. The knights were afoot, but I recognized them by the emblems on their shields: Sir Brian’s red badger, young Tristram’s Celtic cross, and the black hawk of Sir Bors, who was hacking through the surprised barbarians like the angel of death himself.

All through history, troops that have withstood withering frontal assaults have broken and run when assailed from their flank or rear. Humans are made to look directly ahead; attacks from the side or from behind unnerve even the most battle-hardened soldiers.

Suddenly assaulted on both flanks, the barbarians broke and tried to run. They knew that a few miles down the Roman road was another defensive ditch, another entrenchment that could shelter them from these sword-wielding Celtic knights pouring out of the woods.

They still outnumbered us greatly, but they were shattered by surprise and sudden fear. From the top of the earthen rampart I saw them break and flee down the road.

But not far. Galloping up the road toward us came the rest of Arthur’s knights, on their charging steeds, Gawain in the lead. They lowered their spears and smashed into the broken, disheartened barbarians.

It was soon finished. The paving stones were littered with bodies, slick with blood. A few of the barbarians had managed to slip away through the woods, but very few. The heart of their army lay dead and dying at the feet of Arthur’s victorious men.

Victorious, but battered. Sir Bors was limping badly, his hip bleeding from an axe blow. Most of the other knights who had fought on foot were also wounded. To my surprise I found that I had taken a spear thrust in my side. I hadn’t noticed it in the heat of battle. Now I automatically clamped down the blood vessels to stop the bleeding and lowered the pain signals along my nerves to a tolerable level.

I smiled tiredly as I watched the men patching each other’s wounds. No need to bind my side; I could control my body well enough, and accelerated healing processes had been built into me.

Arthur slumped down beside me, resting his back against a tree, looking weary and grim. He was nicked here and there. Blood trickled from a slice along his right forearm.

“It’s only a scratch,” he said, when he noticed me staring at the wound.

Lancelot came up, all brightness and zeal. He was totally unharmed, untouched, his tunic not even muddied. Only the dents in his shield revealed that he had been in battle.

He squatted down beside Arthur. “We can gallop down the road and catch the few who got away.”

Arthur shook his head.

“Why not?” Lancelot asked, surprised. He almost looked hurt. “It’s not much past noon. We have plenty of time to dispatch them.”

“They have another entrenchment up the road,” Arthur said. “And still another after that.”

That dimmed Lancelot’s enthusiasm for less than a second. “What of it? We took this one, didn’t we? We made great slaughter of them! Let’s go on!”

“No,” Arthur said, his voice low. “The cost was too high.”

“But—”

Arthur reached out and put a hand on Lancelot’s shoulder. “We have gutted their army. They won’t be raiding our villages and farmsteads now. We’ve taught them a lesson that they will remember for a long time.”

“But we haven’t driven them into the sea!”

“No, and we’re not going to. Not now. We’ve lost too many men. We need to rest a bit and recruit more men. Then we move north against the Jutes.”

Lancelot looked shocked. “And leave the Angles in their villages? Without driving them into the sea?”

“We don’t have the strength to drive them into the sea. Not yet.”

Shaking his head in disappointment, Lancelot murmured, “That’s not the path to glory, my lord. Leaving them chastened isn’t the same as a glorious victory.”

With a tired smile, Arthur said, “I’m not interested in glory, my young friend. I’m interested in power.”

It was clear that Lancelot did not understand, but I thought I did. The Angles would huddle behind their defensive earthworks and stay in their villages, the cream of their manhood killed. It would be a long time before they ventured out again to raid Celtic farms and settlements. Arthur would use that time to draw new recruits to his army, to march north and defeat the Jutes there, to drive the Scots back behind Hadrian’s Wall and secure the northern kingdoms.

He would win great power for Ambrosius Aurelianus, making the old man a true High King among the Celts. And perhaps, I thought, Arthur himself would in the end become the High King. He was certainly showing that he understood the workings of power.

Aten wanted him dead, but it seemed to me that Arthur was actually on his way to uniting the fractious Celts. Maybe he would one day truly drive the barbarian invaders out of Britain. I vowed anew to help him all I could.

Then I thought of Lancelot, so eager for glory. Aten had meant for Lancelot to lead Arthur to his death in the battle. Instead, Lancelot had saved Arthur’s life. I felt glad about that.

Yet I thought I heard, in the far recesses of my mind, Aten’s cynical laughter. Lancelot will still be the agent of Arthur’s death, the Golden One seemed to be saying. Wait and see. Wait and see.