The Legend of the King (9 page)

Three hours later, he found another ravaged farm and made three more graves. Then, that same evening, the smoking ruins of a village with at least thirty bodies lying exposed. Nothing that might be used or resold was left in the hamlet. Terence found the bodies of two women whose left ring fingers were severed, apparently to get at their wedding bands. Terence realized he couldn't stop to bury every body that the White Horsemen left behind, and so, reluctantly, he turned his back on the ruins and continued on the army's trail.

Over the next few days, Terence saw more devastation and signs of greater cruelty than he had seen in all his life. Old women, babies, youths, men, women, children: all were killed with the same ruthlessness. What he did not find was anyone left alive. Occasionally he found a burned farm or wayside inn with no bodies, but not once did he find a survivor. He began to feel as if he were the lone living soul in a dead land. He didn't even hear birds or small animals, as if some instinct that wild creatures have and humans don't had warned them to leave and not return. But he was getting closer to the horsemen. By the ninth day after leaving Camelot, the ruins that Terence found were still warm from the destroying fires. He could not be more than two days behind them.

On the tenth day, he found his first survivor, a young man who knelt by a grave and stared blankly at the charred ruins of a tiny farmhouse. Terence dismounted and stood by the young man, saying nothing. At last the youth looked up. "Have you come to finish the job? Kill me?"

Terence shook his head.

"I wish you would."

"Did you see who did this?" Terence asked.

The youth nodded and slowly rose to his feet. "It was King Arthur's men."

Terence felt a chill. "No," he said.

"Ay, it was. They rode in at sunset, killed the cow and the dog, then set the house on fire. I was cutting wood out back and saw the smoke, so I ran up in time to see my Elise in the yard, begging the knights to spare us. They laughed and killed her where she stood."

Terence bowed his head. He had thought his heart could grow no heavier, but the young farmer's story was like molten lead poured into his chest. After a long moment, he asked, "How did you live?"

"I ran at the knights with my axe," the young man said, "but they knocked me down and took it away. Then they raised their swords to kill me, but another knight stopped them. It was a young man with fair hair and golden armor. He rode up and shouted for them to stop. They did."

"The knight with golden armor saved you?"

The man nodded. "He sent the others on and dismounted to see if I was hurt. Then he helped me dig a grave for Elise."

"He helped ... but why?" Terence couldn't imagine what Mordred was doing.

"He's trying to save everyone he can, he said. The king's gone mad, you know."

"King Arthur?"

"Ay. He's sent out all his armies to kill whatever they find. But the golden knight—Mordred, he said his name was—can no longer follow a mad, murderous king. He told me to stay hidden, that he would be raising an army of true knights to put an end to Arthur's killing, that one day England would be free again."

The breadth of Mordred's plan shook Terence. Mordred meant to ravage England, leaving alive only a few, all believing that Arthur was to blame. "Mordred was lying," Terence said.

"Is this a lie?" the man said, gesturing at his ruined farm. "Is my Elise's grave a lie?"

"Arthur didn't command it, nor is he mad. Mordred's trying to turn the land against the king."

"I saw the knights. They wore Arthur's colors."

"Anyone can wear colors."

The young man shook his head. "So you say. But who should I believe but the man who stood by me and helped me dig Elise's grave? Arthur may once have been a good king, but he's changed. From this day on I swear to kill every knight of Arthur's court I find."

Terence reached behind him to his saddle and drew his sword from the scabbard. Taking it to the young man, he handed it to him hilt first, then dropped to one knee before him.

"Eh? What's this?"

"I'm Sir Terence of Arthur's Round Table," Terence said. "I tell you that Arthur's not mad, and that he didn't order these murders. But if you won't believe me, do as you will."

The man stared at him, the cloud of grief clearing from his eyes for a moment. He lowered the point to the ground. "You're mad, too," he said.

Terence let out his breath slowly and climbed to his feet. "I may be," he agreed, "but the king is well."

"So you say that Mordred did all this to make me hate the king?"

"Why do you think the knights obeyed him when he stopped them? He's their leader. Mordred is King Arthur's son, and he means to steal the throne from his father."

Wordlessly, the young man handed the sword back to Terence.

"What is your name?" asked Terence.

"Bede, Sir Terence."

"Will you help me, Bede?" The youth nodded slowly. "I need you to take my horse and ride back to Camelot. Tell Arthur all that has happened. Tell him that Mordred has left Cornwall and is marching northeast."

Bede nodded slowly. "Will he believe me?"

"You'll have my horse and my sword. Arthur will know them both."

"You're giving me your sword?"

Terence nodded. "From here, I go through the woods. A sword will only be in my way. You keep them both. And now, Bede, kneel." Bede stared at Terence, confused, but he did as told, and Terence laid the flat of the sword on Bede's shoulders. "Today I make you a knight. Rise, Sir Bede: be ever true to your God, protect always your neighbor, honor always your king."

Bede rose, blinking with astonishment, and dazedly took the sword that Terence handed him. "Can you do that?" he asked. "I thought only a king—"

Terence half smiled. "I don't know. There are probably some rules against it somewhere. But this is no time for rules. Besides, if I missed something, Arthur can fix it when you get there. Now, hurry."

Sir Bede climbed into Terence's saddle, then looked back. "Sir Terence?"

"Yes?"

"Would you really have let me kill you?"

The half smile curled Terence's lips again. "I was mostly hoping you wouldn't try," he said. "But failing that, I was planning to duck really, really fast."

In all his days of traveling before he found Bede, Terence had seen not one living human. The next day, though, on foot, he saw more people than he could count, most of them gathered in ragged groups and clustered under makeshift shelters. Having given Bede his horse, Terence left the main roads to travel through dense forests that would be impenetrable to knights on horseback, and he soon realized that others had done the same. Several times he stopped to speak with people, hearing from them variations of the story that Bede had told. Some had hidden when they heard the riders approach, but at least half of those he spoke to told about being rescued by the golden knight Sir Mordred. After three or four attempts, Terence gave up arguing with them. No one believed him. In a twisted way, Terence realized, this was King Arthur's fault: he had been so successful at driving recreant knights out of England that many of the country people had never seen a knight who wasn't from Camelot. To these, all knights, good and bad, were from Arthur.

The encampments grew more numerous as Terence pressed deeper into the forest, and eventually he came to a large clearing in the center of a wood. Four solid cabins bordered the clearing, and within that square, people huddled everywhere. A stone cross rising above the crowd proclaimed this to be a hermitage, and among the milling throng Terence saw a few men in brown monk's robes. By the cross rose smoke and the aroma of food. Terence slipped through the crowd in that direction and in time came to a large cauldron on a fire, where a hugely bearded man in a cowl was spooning out soup to people in a line.

"Back of the line!" the bearded man said absently to him as he neared.

"I'm not looking for food," Terence said.

"That makes you the first," the man grunted. "Do you have food to share, then?"

Terence shook his head. He had left all his dry food in his saddlebags for Bede. "Sorry."

"You a huntsman?" asked the bearded man, glancing at Terence's bow and quiver of arrows.

"You might say that."

"Then go hunting, man, and bring us some game. You think it's easy to feed this many people?"

Terence shook his head. "There is no game," he said simply.

The man sighed. "That's what Bleoberis says. He's trying anyway."

Terence looked up at the name. Bleoberis was the name of a knight of the Round Table who a few years earlier had left the fellowship to join a hermitage. "Bleoberis? Who was once a knight?"

The man nodded and served a beer mug full of soup to a woman with pale cheeks and tired eyes.

"Then you're the hermit Godwulf?" Gawain's cousin Ywain had stayed with this hermit some years before and spoke highly of him.

"Brother Abbot they call me now," Godwulf rumbled, chuckling. "Since Bleoberis, we've had near a dozen men join us here. Good thing, too. Need every one of them these days."

A youth in a robe like Godwulf's approached. "I've brought the rest of the mugs, Brother Abbot. Might as well use them for soup now."

Godwulf looked stricken. "You mean...?"

"Ay, Brother Abbot," the young man said mournfully. "Beer's gone."

Godwulf took a long breath, then sighed. "The Lord will provide according to our need," he said at last.

"Do you still speak of God?" snapped a middle-aged man in the soup line. "I want no more of your God. I watched Arthur's knights kill my family.
The Lord will provide?
Provide what?"

Godwulf spooned another mug of soup and gave it to the man without a word. The man scowled back at him. "God lets the knights kill us, and all you do is give me a cup of thin soup in His name?"

"Ay," said Godwulf.

"I'd rather have a God who was strong enough to save my family, thank ye," the man snapped.

"Strong's easy," Godwulf said quietly. "Any bastard can be strong. Come here, man. What's your name?"

"Adelbert," the man said defiantly.

"Well, step up here, Adelbert," Godwulf said abruptly. The man did, and Godwulf placed the soup ladle in his hands. "Could ye serve the people for a bit, friend? I'll go see what we have to start another pot."

Dumbly the man took the ladle and began scooping broth into cups. Godwulf headed for the largest cabin, and Terence fell into step beside him. "The knights doing this aren't really from Arthur, you know," he said.

"Don't care," Godwulf rumbled. "Whoever it was, the people are just as hungry."

Terence nodded. "Can you tell me where the knights were headed? They were moving northeast last I knew."

"Not moving anywhere now," Godwulf said. "Bleoberis says they're camped west of Abingdon and haven't moved in a couple of days. Due north."

"Thank you," Terence said. Godwulf opened a hatch and headed into a root cellar. Terence struck out north.

The nearer Terence got to the camp of the White Horsemen, the more unnaturally quiet the woods became, as if Mordred was wrapped in a deepening cloak of silence. No birds sang and no squirrels chattered. Even the insects were silent, and spiders' webs hung tattered and empty from the trees. The part of Terence that had always felt most at home among the trees felt edgy and urged him to turn and run, but unlike the forest creatures, Terence had purposes beyond self-preservation. Instinct, more than any physical evidence, told Terence that he was near his goal, but it hardly seemed possible in this dense forest. An army needed a clearing or a plain in which to camp, and a reliable source of water, and Terence had seen neither for over an hour, and the underbrush seemed to grow more impenetrable at each step.

A light glinted directly ahead, and Terence froze. For several long minutes, Terence watched the spot without moving. It flickered again, warm and amber, not cold and metallic like a reflection on armor. Terence saw no other movement and crept closer. He had to move inch by inch, for the forest grew thicker the closer he came. Brambles caught at his arms and legs, and vines twined around his feet, as if trying to slow him down. Terence could see the light now; it was a campfire, and behind it stood a single military tent. A branch on a tree seemed to shift position, as if to block Terence's way, and suddenly he knew he had been a fool. He turned to run, but before he could move, a lazy voice said, "You will die if you try it."

In a second, the forest vanished, and Terence found himself on a grassy plain surrounded by knights with drawn swords and yeomen with arrows pointed at him. Terence lowered his arms, then turned back to look into the pale eyes of Mordred, empty but for a stir of cruel amusement. "You should have seen yourself," he remarked, "creeping across an open field in the light of day, acting as if you were in—oh, I don't know—a thick forest or something."

Beside Mordred stood a withered old woman in a gray cloak, tittering with glee. Terence had seen hags before, wizened practitioners of dark magic, and realized that he had been lured into the open by a simple illusion.

Mordred continued, "Hag Karnis here has a knack with an enchanted wood, wouldn't you say, Sir Terence?"

Hearing his name, the hag looked sharply up at Mordred's face and started to speak, but Terence spoke first. "Among other skills," he said affably, "she must have sensed my approach from quite a distance to lay such a trap."

"Ah, but that wasn't the hag," Mordred replied. "That was my doing. I don't have many magical skills, considering who my mother is, but I do know when I'm being followed. I wish you would throw that knife over here at my feet, Sir Terence. Gently. My archers are prepared to shoot at the least unexpected movement."

Terence tossed his knife in the grass between Mordred and himself. Then, without waiting to be asked, he unslung his bow and arrows and threw them down beside the knife. Mordred picked up Terence's knife, a black dagger with a wicked-looking blade and a hilt curiously carved in the semblance of two writhing snakes.

"Dear me," Mordred mused. "Now what, I wonder, is the noble Sir Terence of King Arthur's court doing with one of Adamantha's blades?" He showed it to the hag. "Wouldn't you say it's Adamantha's work, Hag Karnis?"