27. Purgatory
Arthur read the letter twice before he crumpled it in his fist and threw it into the fire. "I take it your master wants my answer at once?" he asked the man in the dust-covered uniform with the crest of the du Lacs.
"That is so, My Lord."
"Then tell your Lord I am to meet him, as he wishes, in any place and at any time he chooses. Alone. But after tomorrow's battle." Only to himself Arthur added "if I'm still alive at the time."
The messenger bowed silently and went away, as secretly as he had come to deliver Lancelot's challenge. A duel to the death, just the two of them.
The winner takes it all.
Arthur knew not whether to laugh or to cry about it. So very brave, so honourable – so childish and archaic. Two men, one woman, and a fight for her hand.
Did Lance even know if he was living in the real world or in a fairy tale?
From the outside Arthur heard the noise of an encampment getting ready for battle. Any moment now Leon, Percival and the others would show up for a last briefing.
The King could hardly believe that it had been not more than 10 months since Guinivere and Galahad had been abducted.
Shortly thereafter Angus Branguard, putting bygones behind him when more urgent peril arose, had sent the first urgent reports. Rumour had it that Saxon troops had made their landfall near Lancelot's Barony. That Erec had returned from exile to lead the marauding soldiery who quickly laid waste to the outskirts of Camelot, to Mercia and other parts of Albion that took their time getting ready to fight a surprise attack after more than a decade of peace and prosperity.
If Arthur had nourished any hopes that Angus' reports exaggerated the scope of the danger, he was quickly disabused when it became obvious that the combined Saxon-Gaulish forces were met by some of the Albion nobles, whose professed goal was to fight for their King, his Queen and lawful heir.
After only six weeks, Camelot had to face the fact that the whole north of Albion was in open rebellion against the High King's regime.
Since then Arthur found himself in the absurd situation of fighting the rebels at every corner of his Kingdom while these same rebels claimed most piously that their enemy were the Branguards, who allegedly had taken King Arthur Pendragon hostage. So that the most noble and honourable Baron du Lac had had no other choice but to take the Queen and the lawful Crown Prince of Camelot under his protection.
How very unfortunate that the Queen's brother had lost his life during Lancelot's brave and selfless action.
Arthur closed his fist when he remembered Elyan's horrible agony. The thought how Guinivere must feel about her younger brother's senseless death drove him mad.
Perhaps Lancelot had been merciful enough to keep it from her. Arthur desperately hoped that his one-time friend had not yet been stripped of all common humanity and decency.
Although the High King had reason to doubt that.
In what was arguably the most effective mockery of all times Erec used a finely tuned blend of hypocrisy, slimy language and pompous public appearances to issue decrees and new laws, "in defence of the law, the crown and the Christian faith" as he phrased it. Lancelot du Lac, under name and seal of the Queen as regent for her son in his minority, ratified everything Erec said or did.
At the same time, Arthur's orders were denounced as being issued under duress, the useless utterances of a helpless prisoner at the Branguards' mercy.
It was, albeit with some roles reversed, the situation Arthur had dreaded and – if just barely – avoided the day he had pulled Excalibur from the stone.
True enough, he had thought all was lost back then, and still he had been victorious in the end. But then, he had not done it alone. Morgana had been there. And Merlin.
How angry the proud Pendragon King had been when he had found out that they had used their magic for cheating. That they had smoothed his path to the throne on every turn, every step of his way.
And what he would give if they were here now, to do the same again.
Sometimes Arthur missed his sister so much that it hurt. But most of all he missed the unruly mop of black hair, the cheeky smile and the outrageous insults of his former manservant.
Clotpole. Prat. Dimwit, supercilious idiot.
There were hours, days even, when Arthur felt he should just turn around, just walk a few steps more, and he would see him, laughing, offering some foolish word of advice, some stupid idea that would somehow, miraculously bring about the great solution, just like that. By sheer, idiotic innocence of thought, by an idea nobody else could ever have.
But it never happened.
Merlin was gone and with him the world he had created for himself and for his friends.
Arthur had been left behind in cruel, cold reality.
In this reality, miracles did not occur.
Today, more than one man, more than one city or liegemen got confused by Erec's propaganda. And more than one noble made the obvious choice – to stay neutral until the victor emerged. To him, may his name be Pendragon, Branguard or du Lac, they would bend their knee.
After the dust had settled.
The winner takes it all.
How very unfortunate that the loser was already obvious – the peasants, the countrymen, townsfolk and merchants as well as anybody else who bore the brunt of the Saxon and Gaulish pillaging, looting and raping.
The mercenaries Erec and Lancelot had hired to do their dirty work for them while they kept their oh so very Christian hands lilywhite and clean, lived of the land they tormented. Harvests were spoilt, whole villages murdered, the roads were no longer safe and foreign traders avoided Albion's ports.
10 months of bloodshed, of mindless destruction, and already Arthur could watch the day that would see his country on its knees dawn on the horizon.
Now, at long last, his and the Branguards' untiring efforts paid off. Here, at Badon Hill, Arthur's troops, held together, as he sometimes thought, by nothing but hope, unfounded faith, childish enthusiasm and a not altogether healthy desire for revenge, had come upon their enemy.
Erec and his troops were cornered, with an impassable mountain ridge in deepest winter in their back and a ransacked, exhausted swampy wasteland all around them.
It was open field battle or surrender, without any other options for any of the two armies.
"Sire?" Leon asked on entering the tent. As always, he was the first. Punctuality and accuracy on two legs.
Arthur sighed, turned – and was stunned for a second.
Leon had the first sunrays in his back, and on parts of his face. The merciless light revealed what Arthur had so far not noticed. Or rather, what he had ignored. The deep wrinkles, the sallow lips and skin. The grey hairs. The determined but unsettling fanatic eyes.
The burial of his family had turned Sir Leon into an old, bitter man who loved no one.
"I verified our intelligence reports of last night" Leon now said, all business, without waiting for his King's reply. "And I say, we've got them, even though they outnumber us two to one. If we can attack the enemy in both flanks, their superior number will be a disadvantage for them, not for us. See here ….."
The other commanders agreed with everything that was said, and Arthur deliberately let himself fall into the familiar, time-honoured ritual of once more going through the plan, step by step, until anyone was satisfied.
No plan had ever survived its first encounter with reality in one piece, but the general idea was given and agreed upon, and Arthur trusted that his men would know what to do when the time came.
The next hour found the High King's army, and himself, ready for the enemy and whatever they would do.
At first, they did nothing at all.
The two armies stood face to face, each waiting for the other to open hostilities.
The overwhelming number of Erec's troops was scaring. Archers were hardly among them, as Arthur knew for a certainty, but they had a vast number of armoured horsemen at their disposal, and the lines of Saxon and Gaulish warriors on foot seemed to reach the horizon.
Used to winning they were, grown fat and strong on the spoils of their plundering the country, well-armed, well fed and hell-bent on keeping what they had already won.
Silently Arthur asked himself if he was crazy, to even try and fight such an opponent.
"It's getting late, My Lord" Leon said at long last, clearly nervous. "Sun's getting high. If we want to …."
"You're right" Arthur interrupted him. "We cannot wait for Erec to make up his mind." He raised his arm to signal his troops to advance, when he suddenly saw Erec's cavalry begin its charge.
It was a classic strategy. The Pendragon infantry consisted mainly of commoners or mere knights. But for the Branguards and their liegemen, the most powerful nobles of Albion had either stayed at home or joined the ranks of the enemy. None of them doubted that the ragtag bunch of misguided peasants Arthur called his army would run at first sight of the superior mounted power.
So, with every confidence in their own strength, Erec's cavalry charged recklessly, all lines at once, at top speed.
"Heavens, I don't believe it" Leon said loudly. "They have no clue!"
Arthur himself did not believe that it would be that easy until he saw many of the enemy knights slow down, slip, come to a complete disarray and finally to a halt.
"The ground must be soaked with water, Sire" Percival said in what for him was a rare fit of volubility. "Our men made a perfect job of diverting these rivulets. I can't believe they did not see the water sparkle underneath the grass. In that light!"
"Tell our archers to fire" Arthur said with more calm than he felt and soon Erec's troops, caught between the horsemen in full rout and the clueless deployments in their backs, were showered with arrows.
Arthur waited in dreadful suspense for Erec to make the one, decisive mistake without which the Camelot men had no chance for victory, or even survival. The whole battle plan was founded on two assumptions: That the Saxon mercenaries, used more to quick hit-and-run attacks at badly defended settlements or impromptu, unorganised fights with pursuing enemies than to ordered, disciplined battle in the lines, would lose their nerves whilst standing still under constant fire. And that Erec, faced with the threat of being pressed against the unyielding mountain ridge by his own, retreating troops, would try and take the bull by the horns.
By now those of Erec's horsemen who had managed to stay in the saddle and keep their horses going reached Arthur's first lines of defence. Pendragon saw his men engage the enemy and he fought the almost irresistible urge to rush to their side and join their struggle. But it was too early for that.
After long minutes of fierce fighting – to Arthur they seemed like an eternity – the Camelot defenders began a retreat that to the, until now, rather distraught enemies looked like a heaven-sent. Cheering loudly, they renewed their attack, and the Camelotians fell back even further.
Little did the combined forces of Saxon, Gaulish and Albion knights realize that they opened a gap behind them; a gap between their backs and the swamp that had cost most of their comrades any chance to follow them. Wider and wider the gap opened, as the lines of the Camelot cavalry, pitiably thin from the start, fell back in apparent exhaustion, their resistance more and more slackening.
"Now!" Arthur said, who saw his men falling like grass on a mowed meadow, and the very same instant a horn signal called the rest of the Camelot cavalry, so far hidden from sight by the tree lines and some minor hills that flanked the battlefield, into the fight.
"I told you so, Sire" Leon said with grim satisfaction. "For weeks the riff-raff have been putting fire to the wretched farmhouses, stealing anything there was to steal. And not once Erec has used their experiences and asked them about the terrain. Overconfidence, the malaise of so many upstart would-be commanders!"
"Let's not count our chickens before they're hatched" was all what Arthur replied. The strategy was mainly his brainchild, and perhaps that was why he refused to believe in its success. Never ever, not drunk, not sober, he would have blundered as Erec quite obviously had. Such ignorance was unimaginable.
But there it was, in plain sight; Erec's cavalry never stood a chance as the fresh Pendragon deployments came from both sides and fell on their backs. Most of them died during the first minutes of the violent onslaught, and their fall maddened their stuck, helpless comrades completely. What so far had held out, whilst the leaders tried to reorganize their men, now fled backwards, at top speed, headless, in full panic, with no head for the damage they did to Erec's battle-lines.
"Regroup our own horsemen for an organized retreat." Arthur snapped. "We may need them later on."
However, he had no eye for the cavalry deployments once Leon had passed on the order. His sole attention was focussed on Erec's centre, which so far had had no part in the battle except for being massed-together, by the merciless archer fire from both sides as well as by the first lines pushing back in total disarray.
Arthur trembled slightly from pure suspense. All depended on Erec's reaction now. If he had the nerve, and the authority, to stop the first lines' retreat, to reassemble his infantry for a parallel assault on the Pendragon archers who by now must be running low on arrows, and on strength, all might yet be lost.
For long, torturing minutes, everything hung in the balance.
Erec's centre flowed to and fro, someone was visibly trying to reorganize the lines, and Arthur's throat grew tight when he found his own archers' fire growing thinner and less frequent. Any moment now Erec's flanks might regain their senses and give room to the centre troops, which were by now pressed into a compact mass, without any space for manoeuvring.
Loud howling and screaming from the other army dissolved Arthur's worries once and for all. For more than an hour the Saxons, time-seasoned pirates, mercenaries and marauders, brave to distraction but with as much patience and cold-blood as a herd of thoroughbred stallions with fires under their tails, had stood almost motionless while around them, and between them, their friends and comrades fell under the arrows that continued to fall from heaven, sent by an invisible enemy too cowardly to show their faces.
The proud, arrogant horsemen who only last night had bragged about their superiority and noble birth, were good for nothing, for all eyes to see. The brunt of them had by now passed the Saxon lines, trampling their own allies down in their haste and fear to get back to safety.
The Saxons had no doubt that by nightfall many of the supercilious nobles would crawl back to that blond, valiant King of theirs, begging for forgiveness, pledging their loyalty, spelling all the beans they had to spell about Lord Erec's further plans.
They could do that, they had their roots in Albion. They had cousins, friends or former comrades in Arthur's lines. People who would, for some old obligation or the other, speak up for them. Blood is thicker than water.
The Gaulish had their ships waiting for them. If they made it that far, they had a country to return to.
The Saxons, however, had nothing of the kind.
For them, defeat meant escape through the length and breadth of a country that blamed its misery on them. Leaving all that had been won or robbed behind for speed. Those who would survive a retreat under constant fire would go home to their families empty handed, and they couldn't afford that.
War was business, and business was war. All their leaders had they'd spent on their ships and equipment.
His jaw hanging low, his eyes widened, Erec watched one Saxon deployment after the other rush forward, in a wild bunch, with no strategy but the wish to engage the enemy and slay him wherever they could find him.
The soldiers from Gaul and Albion foot-fighters were either drawn into the melee or had the good sense to turn and make a run for it, as by now Arthur's regrouped horsemen, the whole damned lot of them, made ready to take the first brunt of the Saxon assault, while the infantry in their backs; fresh, mostly rested as they were, got ready too.
Before Erec's very eyes, his whole centre dissolved in perfect helter-skelter. In vain he tried to safe at least his cavalry. In the end, when he saw Arthur's horsemen slaughter the Saxon foot-fighters, he assembled his few remaining officers, and escaped the scene of his defeat. He didn't stop until he had reached the safety of Lancelot's stronghold, and had the drawbridge pulled up behind him.
Meanwhile, on the battlefield, strategy and tactics had lost their right on all sides.
Arthur and Percival were fighting back to back, as much as all the others who were still standing.
In a nightmare of blood, screams, dirt and mindless cruelty, they lost all sense of time or space. Their world was reduced to a series of attacking shadows, stabbing and cutting and beating in quick succession, until the one vanished, only to be substituted by another one, and another, and another.
Somewhere in the back of Arthur's mind he knew that it could not be as he sensed it, that the original vastly superior hostile forces had been very much reduced in number. Otherwise he would have died hours ago.
But it did not feel that way. It felt as if the gruesome sequence of slaying and striking would never end.
Excalibur did one more thing to support that surreal impression. Arthur didn't really feel the strain of the fight; it was as if the blade fought without him, as if the weapon had a will of its own. Since the actual fighting had begun, he was sure, without really knowing it, that no enemy would hit him; that he wouldn't be hurt, no matter what happened to him.
When someone grabbed him from behind, Arthur raised his blade and brought it down again in one fierce strike that aimed for the other's abdomen. A brutal move, but one suitable to finish an enemy off with one hit alone.
Somebody screamed his name; the assailant jumped back and Arthur missed by a hair's breadth. Panting heavily, he shook his head, searching for the enemy.
"Arthur, stop" a voice yelled. "It's over. Y'hear me? It's over. The day is yours. You've won."
Arthur barely recognized Leon in the blood and dirt smeared figure that wrestled Excalibur from his suddenly powerless fingers. "Won?" he stammered confusedly. "Won what?"
He looked around him and he saw nothing that looked like glory or triumph.
He saw a slaughterhouse.