Orion and King Arthur

CHAPTER TWO The Bretwalda

1

Three days after we returned to Amesbury, with Excalibur belted at Arthur’s side, a large band of Saxons made camp outside the fort. The next day they were joined by others. Day after day their numbers grew and we sat inside the fort. Arthur seemed uncertain of what he should do.

One evening I looked out over the parapet of the fort’s flimsy palisade and watched the campfires of the Saxon invaders dotting the twilight landscape like a thousand angry red eyes. As far as the hilly horizon they stretched, more of them each night.

“They’ve never done this before,” whispered Arthur, standing grimly beside me. I heard bewilderment and deep foreboding in his hushed voice.

“What are they waiting for?” grumbled Sir Bors, standing on Arthur’s other side. “Why don’t they attack?”

“Each night their numbers grow,” Arthur murmured, staring transfixed at the Saxon campfires. “Their leader, Aelle, calls himself Bretwalda now—king of Britain.”

“Hmph,” Bors snorted.

“Other barbarian tribes are joining his host: South Saxons, West Saxons, Jutes, Angles—they’ve all sworn their allegiance to Aelle.”

We stayed hemmed up inside Amesbury fort for nearly two weeks. Usually the barbarians raided a village or farmstead and ran away before the British defenders could find them. But now they were camped outside this hilltop fort, with more and more of the raiders joining the besiegers every day. These were not mere raiders, they were a powerful army, under the leadership of Aelle, who obviously intended to destroy Amesbury fort and its defenders.

I looked up into the darkening sky. A fat gibbous moon grinned mockingly at me, while the Swan and the Eagle rode low off in the west. My namesake constellation of Orion was climbing above the eastern horizon. Autumn chill was in the air, yet the barbarian invaders showed no sign of heading back to their settlements on the coast and leaving Britain a season of peace and healing.

Wheezing old Merlin joined the three of us up on the parapet, climbing the creaking wooden stairs slowly, painfully. In the starlight his tattered white beard seemed to glow faintly. With his long robe he seemed to glide along the platform toward us, rather than walk.

“I have determined when the Saxons will attack,” he pronounced in his quavering, thin voice.

“When?” Arthur and Bors asked as one.

“On the night of the full moon,” said Merlin.

“A week from now.”

Bors growled, “It makes sense. They know we’re starving in here. They’ll wait until they figure we’re too weak to fight.”

“Then we’ve got to do something,” Arthur replied. “And soon.”

“Yes,” Bors agreed. “But what?”

Arthur had been put in charge of the hill fort’s defense by his uncle, Ambrosius, who styled himself High King of the Celtic Britons. The Saxon barbarians had been raiding the coasts of Britain for years, decades, ever since the Roman legions had left the island. Now the Saxons and their brother tribes of barbarians were building permanent settlements in the coastal regions.

And moving inland. Amesbury was one of a string of hilltop forts that Ambrosius had hoped would stand against the Saxon tide. Some called it a castle, but it was nothing more than a wooden palisade enclosing a few huts and stables, with a single timbered tower, a rude wooden chapel, and a blacksmith’s forge. Even so, it stood against the barbarians well enough. They knew nothing of siege warfare, had no knowledge of rock-throwing ballistae or any devices more complicated than a felled tree trunk for a battering ram.

Yet crafty old Aelle had decided to bring all their strength to Amesbury and destroy the fort. And afterward? I wondered. Would they methodically reduce each of Ambrosius’ forts and leave the interior of Britain open to their ravages?

The dark night wind whispered to me and I looked up at the stars scattered across the black sky. I had seen the same stars at ancient Ilium, I remembered, in another life. I had built a siege tower there, under the watchful eye of wily Odysseos, and led my men over the high stone wall of mighty Troy.

In another life. I have lived many lives, and died many deaths. I have traveled among those far-flung stars bedecking the night sky. I have fought battles on distant worlds under strange suns.

My Creator Aten, the Golden One, has sent me to this place and time to serve Arthur until the moment comes when I must stand aside and let him be killed. Or perhaps the Golden One plans for me to murder Arthur. I have assassinated others for him, in other lifetimes. I knew that I must obey my Creator’s commands, yet with every fiber of my being I wanted to defy those commands, to disregard his murderous orders and raise young Arthur to the power and authority that would save Britain from these barbarians.

Yet I stood helplessly in the gathering darkness beside Arthur, the son of an unknown father, adopted by Ambrosius and guided by Merlin. Barely old enough to begin growing a beard, Arthur had been marked by my Creator for a brief moment of glory—and then ignominious death.

To Bors and Merlin and all the others I was Arthur’s squire, a servant, a nonentity. Arthur knew better, but we kept our friendship a secret between us. It was easier for me that way: I could remain at Arthur’s side and provide him with advice and guidance—and help in the fighting, when it was necessary.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Bors asked again, gruffly. He was a blunt, hard-faced man, scarred from many battles, his thick beard already showing streaks of gray.

Without taking his eyes from the hundreds of Saxon campfires dotting the night, Arthur replied softly, “Instead of waiting for the barbarians to build enough strength to bring down this fort, we should sally out and attack them.”

Bors said flatly, “There’s too many of ’em already. We’d be massacred.”

But some of Arthur’s youthful enthusiasm was returning. “If a strong group of us charged out at them on horseback, we could do them great hurt.”

“We could get ourselves killed and save the Saxons the trouble of scaling the walls,” Bors snapped.

“Not if we surprised them,” Arthur insisted. “Not if we attacked them tonight, after the moon sets, while most of them are sleeping.”

“At night?” Bors frowned at the idea.

“Yes! Why not?” Eagerly, Arthur turned to Merlin. “What do you think, Merlin? What do you foresee?”

Merlin closed his eyes for several long moments, then wheezed, “Blood and carnage. The barbarians will fly before your sword, Arthur.”

“You see?” Arthur said to Bors.

Bors glowered at the mystic. “Do you see the Saxons running away and heading back to their ships?”

Merlin shook his head slowly. “No … the mists of the future cloud my vision.”

Bors grumbled with disdain.

But Arthur would not be denied. Bors had more battle experience, but Arthur had the fire of youthful vigor in him.

“Orion,” he commanded, “get the horses saddled and fit. And ask all the knights which of them will honor me by joining in this sally against the enemy.”

As a squire, of course, I went where my master went. Knights could offer excuses to remain safely inside the fort. There were no excuses allowed for squires.

2

It was well past midnight by the time we were armed and mounted, thirty-two knights and squires on snorting, snuffling horses that pawed impatiently on the packed earth of the courtyard. Arthur and the other knights were helmeted and wore chain mail and carried spears as well as their swords. The moon was down. Firelight glinted off the emblems painted on their shields: Arthur’s red dragon, Bors’ black hawk, the green serpent of Gawain, lions and bears and other totem symbols.

I was the only squire who wore a chain mail shirt. The others, mostly beardless youths, went into battle in their tunics, protected only by their helmets and shields. I carried neither helmet nor shield nor spear, only the sword strapped to my back, as I sat on my mount at Arthur’s side.

Sir Bors, still grousing, nosed his horse up to Arthur’s other side. “This is madness,” he muttered. “They outnumber us a hundred to one.”

Arthur smiled grimly in the starlight. “Their numbers will be smaller before the sun rises again.”

“As will ours,” Bors mumbled.

Arthur pointed with his spear and a pair of churls lifted the heavy timber bar from the palisade gates, then slowly swung the gates open. They creaked horribly in the stillness of the night. I thought that any chance of surprise was mostly lost already.

But Arthur bellowed, “Follow me!” and we charged out into the night, each man screaming his own battle cry.

The barbarians were truly surprised. We thundered down into their camp at the base of the hill, trampling the embers of their campfires and scattering the startled men like dry leaves before the wind. I stayed close behind Arthur, saw him transfix a running Saxon with his spear and lift the shrieking barbarian off his feet. Arthur was nearly knocked off his horse by the shock of the impact, and he had to let go of the spear. The barbarian warrior, clutching the shaft where it penetrated his chest, fell over backward, already dead.

I rode close behind Arthur, my sword in hand, ready to protect him against anything. Once more my senses went into overdrive and everything about me seemed to slow down into a sleepy, sluggish torpor. I saw a naked barbarian run in dreamlike slow motion at Arthur’s left side, his long blond braids flying behind him. Arthur took his sword stroke on his shield and, while drawing Excalibur from its jeweled scabbard with his right hand, bashed the warrior’s head with the edge of the shield. The man staggered back and Bors pinned him to the ground with his spear.

Another warrior hurled his axe at Arthur’s unprotected right side. I saw it turning lazily through the flame-lit air and reached out with my sword to flick it harmlessly away. Then I drove my mount at the barbarian and slashed him from shoulder to navel with a stroke that nearly wrenched me out of my saddle.

Waving Excalibur on high, Arthur urged his mount forward against a gaggle of barbarian warriors who stood naked but armed with swords and axes. I pulled up alongside him and we sliced the lives out of those men, their blood spurting as they screamed their death agonies.

But still more were coming at us, roaring with anger and battle lust. The first shock of our surprise attack had quickly worn off and now they were hot for our blood. They seemed to grow out of the very ground, no matter how many we killed still more rose against us. We waded into them as they swarmed around us, pulling men off their mounts, pulling down the horses themselves. Men and beasts alike screamed as the barbarians hacked them to bloody pieces.

The knights fared better than the lightly armed squires, but even they were being hard pressed by the teeming, swarming barbarians. Arthur and I weaved a sphere of death with our swords. Anyone who dared to come within reach of our blades died swiftly.

But still more of the barbarians rushed at us, assailing us like swarms of wasps, surging like the tide of the sea.

“We’ve got to get back!” Bors shouted. “Their whole army is aroused now.”

“Yes,” Arthur agreed. “Sound the retreat.”

The squire who served as bugler put his ram’s horn to his lips and blew mightily. We turned back toward the fort, fighting and hacking our way through the maddened barbarians. The Saxons made no effort to climb the hill and get through the guarded gate; they were content to drive us out of their camp.

3

We were tired and dispirited as we alit from our mounts. Eleven of our number were gone, nine squires and two knights. Each of us was spattered with blood, mostly Saxon, although almost every one of us had been nicked or wounded.

Except for Arthur. He was untouched and still brimming with excitement.

“How many did we kill, do you think?” he asked.

“How many did we lose?” Bors countered.

Merlin watched us from the parapet as we dismounted wearily and helped the wounded off their horses. Several of the men groaned with pain. Many of the young squires were white faced with shock or loss of blood.

“Well, you had your moment of glory,” Bors said sourly. “It didn’t do us much good, did it?”

Arthur did not argue against him. Bors was an experienced fighter. Arthur had been named commander of this fort because he was the High King’s adopted nephew, and he knew it. The Saxons and their barbarian allies were still encamped around the base of the hill. There were fewer of them, yes, but still more than enough to take the fort when they finally decided to attack.

At last Arthur said, “We’d better get some sleep. No sense standing here until dawn.”

Arthur and the others headed wearily for the timbered tower at the far end of the wall. I went to the stables, where my pallet of straw awaited me amidst the steaming, sweating horses. The heat of their bodies kept the wooden shelter warm despite the breeze that whistled through its slats. I automatically tuned down my sense of smell; the stables and horse grounds were not the most sweetly fragrant areas of the fort.

I stretched out on the pallet and thought of my beloved Anya. She had taken human form in many placetimes to be with me. She and I had faced the alien Set in the time of the dinosaurs. We had lived together for a brief interlude of happiness in the beautiful wooded glades of Paradise.

Always Aten pulled us apart, insanely jealous of her love for me. Yet time and again Anya had found me, helped me, loved me no matter where and when I had been sent by the Golden One.

I closed my eyes and pictured her perfect face, those fathomless silver-gray eyes that held all of eternity, her raven-black hair cascading like a river of onyx past her alabaster shoulders. She was a warrior goddess, a proud and courageous Athena, the only one of the Creators who dared to oppose Aten openly.

Suddenly a fireball of light blasted my senses, a glare of golden radiance so bright that I flung my arms across my eyes.

“I know your thoughts, creature.”

I was no longer at Amesbury fort. I had been wrenched out of that point in spacetime, translated into a vastly different place, the ageless realm of the Creators.

I could feel the brilliance of his presence. Aten, the Golden One, the self-styled god who created me.

“Get up, Orion,” the Golden One commanded. “Stand before your Creator.”

Like an automaton I climbed slowly to my feet, my arms still covering my eyes, shielding them from his blazing splendor. The radiance burned my flesh, seared into the marrow of my bones.

“Put your hands down, Orion, and face the glory of your master,” he said, his voice sneering at me.

I did as he commanded. I had no choice. It was as if I were a mere puppet and he controlled my limbs, my entire body, even the beating of my heart.

It was like staring into the sun. The glare was overpowering, a physical force that made my knees buckle and forced my eyes to squint painfully. After what seemed like an eternity the blinding radiance contracted, compressed itself, and took on human form. My eyes, watering with pain, beheld Aten, the Golden One who had created me.

He was glorious to look upon. Wearing splendid robes of gold and gleaming white, Aten looked every inch the god he pretended to be. To the ancient Greeks he was Apollo; to the first Egyptians he was Aten the sun god who gave them light and life. I first knew him as Ormazd, the fire god of Zoroaster in ancient Persia.

I loathed him. Aten or Apollo or whatever he chose to call himself, he was an egomaniac who schemed endlessly to control all of the spacetime continuum. But he is no more a god than I am. He—and the other Creators—are humans from the far future, or rather, what humans have evolved into: men and women of incredible knowledge and power, able to travel through time and space as easily as young Arthur rides a horse across a grassy meadow.

He had sent me to be with Arthur in the darkness of an era where a few brave men were trying to stem the tide of barbarism that was destroying civilization all across the old Roman world.

I looked into Aten’s haughty leonine eyes, gleaming with vast plans for manipulating the spacetime continuum, glittering with what may have been madness.

“You hate me, Orion? Me, who created you? Who has revived you from death countless times? How ungrateful you are, creature. How unappreciative.” He laughed at me.

“You can read my thoughts,” I said tightly, “but you cannot control them.”

“That makes no difference, worm. You will obey me, now and forever.”

“Why should I?”

“You have no choice,” he said.

I remembered differently. “I disobeyed you at Troy,” I told him. “I refused to annihilate the Neandertals, back in the Ice Age.”

His flawlessly handsome face set into a hard scowl. “Yes, and you came close to unraveling the entire fabric of spacetime. It cost me much labor to rebuild the continuum, Orion.”

“And you have cost me much pain.”

“That is nothing compared to the agonies you will suffer if you dare to resist my commands again. Final death, Orion. Death without revival. Oblivion. But much pain first. An infinity of pain.”

“I will not murder Arthur,” I said.

Almost he smiled. “That may not be necessary, creature. There are plenty of Saxons available for killing him. Your task is merely to stand aside and let it happen.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I won’t.”

He laughed again. “Yes, you will, Orion. When the moment comes you will do as I command. Just as you assassinated the High Khan of the Mongols.”

I blinked with the memory. Ogatai. He had befriended me, made me his companion, his trusted aide—just as young Arthur has.

“You can’t make me—”

But I was in the darkness and stench of the stable again, alone in the night. The Golden One had played his little game with me and sent me back to Arthur’s placetime.

Alone, I lay back on the brittle straw once again. Why had Aten sent me here? What schemes was he weaving about Arthur and these barbarian invaders of Britain?

Anya. She was the only one who could help me. She loved me, and I loved her with a passion that spanned the centuries and millennia, a love that reached out to the stars themselves.

Yet I could not find her that night, could not reach her. I called to her silently, searched out with my mind through the dark cold night. No response. Nothing but the aching emptiness of infinity, the lonely void of nothingness. It was as if she no longer existed, as if she never had existed and was merely a dream of my imagination.

No, I told myself. Anya is real. She loves me. If she doesn’t answer my plea it’s because Aten is blocking my efforts, keeping us apart.

I strove with every atom of my being to translate myself to the timeless refuge of the Creators, far in the future of Arthur’s world. To no avail. I strained until perspiration soaked every inch of my body, but I remained in this smelly, dank, unlit stable.

Exhausted, I fell into sleep. And dreamed of Alexander.

4

The crown prince of Macedonia, son of doughty Philip II, Alexander was also young and impetuous when I knew him. Proud and ambitious, driven by his cruel mother, Olympias, young Alexander learned battle tactics—and the strategies of war—from his masterful father, Philip.

In my dream I was at Alexander’s side once again as he led the cavalry at the epic battle of Chaeronea. We galloped across the field toward the Athenian foot soldiers, thrusting and slashing at their hoplites in a wild melee of dust and blood, screams of triumph and agony filling the air. I felt the horse beneath me pounding across the corpse-littered plain and strained mightily to rein him in, hold him back, as I slashed with my sword at the soldiers milling about us.

Alexander pushed ahead on old Ox-Head, his favorite steed, wading through the Athenian infantry, nearly sliding off his mount while jamming his spear into a screaming hoplite. Clutching my mount between my knees, I urged the horse on through the wildly surging tumult until I was beside Alexander, protecting his unshielded right side. Together we drove through the scattering Athenians, then began the grim task of riding down the fleeing hoplites and slaughtering them to the last man.

5

My eyes snapped open. It was still dark, well before dawn. Why did I dream of Alexander? Of all the lives I have led, of all the deaths that I have known, why did I dream this night of Alexander and the Macedonian cavalry?

“Find the answer, Sarmatian,” whispered an invisible voice. A woman’s voice. Anya!

I sat up on the pallet, ignoring the cold wind that sliced through the rickety slats of the stable, disregarding the smell and the snuffling of the drowsing horses.

Sarmatian. Anya called me a Sarmatian. I remembered that I had claimed to be a Sarmatian when I had first found myself at Amesbury, begging a skeptical Sir Bors for a place in Arthur’s service.

Sarmatian.

I sat on the pallet wondering until daylight slanted through the cracks in the stable wall. I washed at the horse trough, drawing the usual laughs and jeers from the other squires and churls.

“You washed yesterday, Orion! Aren’t you afraid you’ll drown yourself?” laughed one of them.

“He washes every morning,” called another, already at work shoveling in the manure pile. “He wants to smell pretty for the girls.”

There were no women in Amesbury fort. All the women and children and old men of the region had been moved farther inland to be safe from the Saxons. If the fort fell, they would be defenseless.

“Don’t you know that washing makes you weak, Orion? You’re scrubbing all your strength away!”

They laughed uproariously. It was the only relief they had from the tension. We all knew that there was an army of Saxons and other invaders just outside our gate, a barbarian army that was growing with every passing day.

Ignoring their jibes, I walked across the dung-dotted courtyard to the timbered tower of the fort. The guard recognized me and let me pass unchallenged. Instead of going to Arthur’s quarters, however, I climbed the creaking wooden stairs to Merlin’s tower-top aerie.

There was no door at the top of the stairs. The entire top level of the tower was a single open area, roofed over with heavy beams of rough-hewn logs. It was a misty autumn morning, dank and chill. On a clear day, I knew, from up at this height you could see almost to the waters of the Solent and the Isle of Wight.

Merlin was standing at the low wall, staring out across the fog-shrouded camp of the barbarians, his back to me. His possessions were meager: a table that held several manuscript rolls, a few unmatched chairs, a couple of chests, a few blankets for a sleeping roll. Nothing more.

“What do you want, Orion?” he asked, without turning to look at me.

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

He shrugged his frail shoulders. “Who else could it be?”

That puzzled me. He had a reputation as a wizard, a magician who could cast spells and foresee the future. Yet, as he finally turned to face me, all I saw was a wizened old man in a stained wrinkled robe of patched homespun with a long dirty white beard and thin, lank hair falling past his shoulders; both beard and hair were knotted and filthy.

“I need your help,” I said.

“Yes, I know,” he replied as he walked slowly, arthritically, toward his table.

“Then you know what I am about to ask.”

“Naturally.” He slowly sank his emaciated frame into the cushion-covered chair.

I stood before the table and folded my arms across my chest. I wore only a thin tunic, scant proof against the frosty autumn morning, but I have always been able to keep my body heat from radiating away and to step up my metabolic rate when I have to, burning off fat stored in the body’s tissues to keep me warm.

“Sit down, Orion,” said Merlin. “It hurts my neck to have to crane up to see your eyes.”

As I sat, I said, “Can you help me, then?”

“Naturally,” he repeated.

“Well, then?”

He stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. Old though he may have been, there was a gleam of intelligence, of curiosity, in his gray-green eyes.

Slowly, a smile spread across his wrinkled face. “You are playing a game with me, Orion.”

“And you with me, sir,” I answered.

“Must I ask you what your problem is?”

“You implied that you already knew.”

His smile broadened. “Ah, yes. That is part of a wizard’s kit, you see. Allow the supplicant to believe that you know everything, and the supplicant will believe whatever you tell him.”

I grinned back at him and recalled, somehow, that psychiatrists in a future civilization would use the same trick on their patients.

“So tell me truly, Orion, why do you seek my help?”

“I can’t remember my past,” I said. “I can’t remember anything from before the first day I came to Amesbury and met Arthur.”

He leaned forward, all eager attention now. “Nothing at all?”

“Only my name, and the idea that I am a Sarmatian, whatever that is.”

“You don’t even know what a Sarmatian is?”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Merlin steepled his fingers. They were long and bony, the backs of his hands veined in blue.

“The Sarmatians were a warrior tribe from far to the east, somewhere in Asia,” Merlin told me. “Many of them joined the Roman legions, where they served as cavalry. They were great horsemen, great fighters.”

“Were?” I probed.

“They left when the legions departed Britain. I had assumed that you were one of them who had stayed behind, deserted the legions.”

“You thought me a deserter?”

“Bors did, as soon as you told him you were a Sarmatian. That is why he was so suspicious of you at first.”

Nodding with newfound understanding, I asked, “Tell me more about the Sarmatians.”

Merlin leaned his head back, raised his eyes to the beamed ceiling. “They were fine metalworkers. They claimed to have invented chain mail, and something else … I can’t quite recall what it was.”

“Chain mail is a great advantage.”

“Yes, we have our smith working night and day to produce more.”

“They came from Asia, you say?”

“So I remember.”

Merlin spent much of the morning asking me questions about myself, questions I could not answer. Aten always erased my memories before sending me on a new mission. He said he provided me with only enough information to perform my task. Yet on more than one mission I fought through his mental blocks and recalled things he would have preferred I did not know.

But on that chill, foggy morning I could remember nothing beyond my first moments at Amesbury fort. A young serving boy brought up a tray of bread and a few scraps of cheese with thin, bitter beer for our breakfast. I realized that even with the fort besieged and our food supply dwindling, Merlin had better rations than the knights and squires down in the courtyard, despite his frail frame.

A horn blast ended our conversation. Arthur was calling all his men together. I got up from the chair before Merlin’s table and took my leave as politely as I could.

As I got to the stairs leading down, the old man called out to me. “Orion! I remember the other thing that the Sarmatians are reputed to have invented.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“Some sort of footgear to help a man get up onto his horse. I believe they called it a stirrup.”

Stirrups, I thought. Yes.

“Oh, and one thing more. A device that they fixed to the heels of their boots, to prick their mounts.”

Spurs.

6

All that day I thought about stirrups and spurs, two simple and obvious-seeming inventions. Yet they were obvious only in hindsight, as most great inventions are.

Arthur and the other knights had neither stirrups nor spurs. When they rode into battle they had to rein in their horses or the first shock of impact with their spears would knock them out of their saddles. Often a knight went down with his victim when he forgot to slow his mount. Even in Alexander’s day, I remembered, we had to be careful to stay on our mounts as we speared footmen. It was the same using our swords. A mounted warrior had to grip his steed tightly with his knees if he wanted to remain mounted while he slashed at the enemy with his sword.

But with stirrups a man could stay in the saddle despite a smashing impact. And with spurs he could goad his steed into a flat-out gallop. Instead of wading into the enemy so slowly that they could eventually swarm us under, we could charge into them like a thunderbolt, crash through their formation, then wheel around and charge again.

As the sun was setting I went to the blacksmith. He was a big, ham-fisted, hairy man with bulging muscles and little patience for what seemed like a harebrained idea.

“I’ve got all I can do to make the chain mail that my lord Arthur is demanding,” he said in a loud, barking voice. Wiping sweat from his brow with a meaty forearm, he went on, “I don’t have time to make some trinkets for you.”

“Very well,” I replied. “I’ll make them for myself.”

“Not until the dinner horn sounds,” he said petulantly. “I’ve got to work this forge until then.”

“I’ll wait.”

For the next few hours I watched the brawny blacksmith and his young apprentices forging chain mail links, heating the metal in their fire while two of the lads wearily pumped the bellows that kept the coals hot, hammering the links into shape, quenching them in a bucket of water with a steaming hiss. It was hot work, but it was simple enough for me to learn how to do it merely by watching them.

The dinner horn sounded at last and the blacksmith took his grudging leave.

“If you steal or break anything,” he warned with a growl, “I’ll snap your spine for you.”

He was big enough to do it, if I let him.

I stripped off my tunic and, clad only in my drawers and the dagger that Odysseos had given me at Troy, strapped to my thigh, I began forging a pair of stirrups.

They were lopsided and certainly no things of beauty, but I admired them nonetheless. Forging a pair of spurs was easier, especially since I did not want them to be so sharp that they would draw blood. They were nothing elaborate, merely slightly curved spikes of iron.

When I went to my pallet that night I was physically tired from the hard labor but emotionally eager to try my new creations in the morning. I looked forward to a good night’s sleep.

But no sooner had I closed my eyes than I found myself standing on the shore of a fog-shrouded lake. The moon ducked in and out of scudding clouds. I was wearing a full robe of chain mail with a light linen tunic over it, my sword buckled at my hip.

I remembered this lake. It was where I had brought Arthur so that Anya could give him Excalibur.

I looked out across the water, silvered by the moonlight, expecting to see the fortress of stainless metal arising from the lake’s depths as it had then. Nothing. The waves lapped softly against the muddy shore, a nightingale sang its achingly sweet song somewhere back among the trees.

And then Anya’s voice called low, “Orion.”

Swiftly I turned and she was there standing within arm’s reach, as beautiful as only a goddess can be, wearing a simple, supple robe of purest white silk that flowed to the ground. Her midnight-dark hair was bound up with coils of silver thread; links of silver adorned her throat and wrists.

We embraced and I kissed her with all the fervor of a thousand centuries of separation. For long moments neither of us said a word, we scarcely breathed, so happy to be in each other’s arms again.

But at last Anya moved slightly away. Her hands still on my shoulders, she looked up into my face. Her silver-gray eyes were solemn, sorrowful.

“I can only remain a few moments, my love,” she said in a near whisper, as if afraid someone would overhear us. “I’ve come to warn you.”

“Against Aten?”

She shook her head slightly. “Not merely him. Several of the other Creators are working with him to help the Saxons and other invaders to conquer Arthur’s Celts and make themselves masters of this entire island.”

“But why?” I asked. “What purpose does it serve to tear down what little is left of civilization here?”

“It involves forces that reach across the entire galaxy, Orion. This point in spacetime is a nexus, a crucial focal point in the continuum.”

Remembering the words Aten had spoken to me weeks earlier, I said to Anya, “He wants to build an empire of the barbarians that will reach from the steppes of Asia to these British Isles—all under his domination.”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “It may be necessary, Orion. Aten’s plan may be the only way to keep the continuum from shattering.”

“I can’t believe that.”

She smiled, sadly. “You mean you don’t want to believe it.”

“It means that Arthur must be killed.”

She nodded solemnly.

“No,” I said. “I won’t let that happen.”

“You can’t oppose Aten’s will! He’ll obliterate you!”

Anger was seething within me. “If I do what Aten wants, can we be together? Can we return to Paradise and live there in peace?”

Her lovely face became tragic. “I want to, my love. But it will be impossible.”

“Because he’ll keep us apart,” I snapped.

“Because the work of saving the continuum, the task of keeping this worldline from collapsing and destroying everything we know, requires all my strength, all my energy.”

“Forever?”

“For as long as it takes,” she said. “My darling, I want to be with you for all the eternities. But how can we be together if the entire universe implodes? Everything will be gone, wiped away as if it never existed.”

For many long, silent moments I stared into her beautiful eyes. I saw sorrow there, a melancholy that spanned centuries of yearning.

At last I found my voice. “And to save the universe, Arthur must be killed.”

“That is Aten’s plan. The barbarians are uniting among themselves now. There is no need for Arthur in this timeline anymore.”

“Tell Aten to make another plan,” I said. “As long as I live I will protect Arthur and help him to drive the barbarians out of Britain.”

If I had thought half a second about my words, I would have expected Anya to be surprised, shocked perhaps, even angry.

Instead she smiled. “You would defy Aten, even at the risk of final death?”

I smiled back at her, grimly. “He promised me an especially painful final death.”

Her smile faded. “He means to keep that promise.”

“And I mean to stand by Arthur until my final breath.”

“I won’t be able to help you,” Anya warned. “I have other tasks to do, far off among the star clouds.”

I nodded, accepting that. “Tell Aten he’ll have to save this timeline with Arthur in it. Let him build an empire of the Celts from this island to farthest reaches of Asia.”

“You run great risks, Orion.”

“What of it? If we can’t be together, what good is living to me?”

She kissed me again, lightly this time, on the lips. “Protect Arthur, then. Help him all you can. But be warned: Aten is not alone in this. Others of the Creators will be working against Arthur.”

“Thanks for the good news,” I said.

“Farewell, my love,” said Anya. “I will return to you as soon as I possibly can.”

I wanted to say several million other things to her but she vanished, simply disappeared before my eyes, like a dream abruptly ending. I love you, Anya, I called silently. I’ll find you again wherever and whenever you are, no matter if I have to cross the entire universe of spacetime. I’ll find you and we’ll be together for eternity.

But when I awoke I was back on my pallet in the dung-smelling stable, with the results of my ironwork lying on the straw beside me.

7

I washed as usual at the horse trough and took the usual jeering banter from the squires and churls. But once I sat on the bare dirt and started tying my crudely made spurs to my ankles, they howled with laugher.

“Are you going to a cockfight, Orion?”

“Maybe he’ll put on wings next and fly out of the fort!”

They rolled on the ground, laughing.

Without a word to them, I went back into the stable and took one of the horses out into the courtyard. When I began to attach my lopsided, ill-formed stirrups to his saddle, they crowded around, curious and grinning.

“What are you doing, Orion?” one of them asked.

Instead of answering, I worked my sandaled foot into one of the stirrups and hoisted myself up into the saddle, careful not to touch the spurs to the horse’s flank. Not yet.

“It’s like a little step!”

“Orion, can’t you swing up on a horse the regular way? Are you so weak from washing every morning that you need a step to help you up?”

They roared with laughter, slapping their thighs and pounding each other’s backs. Wordlessly, I nudged my mount through them and cantered around the courtyard several times. The stirrups felt a little loose. I dismounted and tightened the thongs that held them to the saddle.

By now some of the knights had come out into the courtyard to see what was making the other men laugh so hard.

“What’s that you’ve hooked your feet into?” Gawain called to me. He was several years older than Arthur, built more slightly, his dark hair curled into ringlets that fell past his shoulders.

“It’s an old Sarmatian device,” I answered, walking my horse to him. Better to tell them it’s an old and well-tested idea; new ideas are always suspect. Besides, it was the truth.

Two more young knights joined Gawain, each of them looking just as puzzled as he.

“Why did the Sarmatians need help getting into their saddles?” Gawain asked.

I smiled tightly. “These are not for help in getting into the saddle,” I replied. “Their purpose is to keep you in the saddle.”

Gawain and the others were plainly baffled. Looking up, I saw Merlin peering over the edge of his tower at me. Arthur stood beside him.

Time for a demonstration. I trotted over to the corner of the courtyard where the spears stood stacked like sheaves of wheat, leaned over, and drew one from the stack. Turning my mount around, I centered my gaze upon one of the stout timbers that held the thatched roof over the blacksmith’s open forge. The smith and his young apprentices were just starting up their fire, off to one side of their work area.

I spurred the horse and he took off as if a swarm of hornets were stinging him. I crouched forward in the saddle, my weight on the stirrups, leveled the spear as I galloped straight for that rough-hewn timber. Men and boys scattered out of the way as I raced forward with my spear jutting out ahead. The smith stood transfixed, staring with eyes so wide I could see white all around his pupils. His boys ran, wailing.

I rammed the spear into the timber. The spear shattered from the force of the impact but its point buried itself in the wood almost to the haft. I wheeled my mount around and trotted back to the center of the courtyard.

“I understand now,” said Gawain, with a smirk on his handsome face. “That’s the Sarmatian way of breaking a perfectly good spear.”

Clod! I thought. But I had to remember that I was only a squire and had to be respectful to a knight.

“Not so, sir. With these stirrups I can drive a spear through an enemy at full gallop without being knocked out of my saddle.”

“And what good is that if you break the spear?” Gawain sniffed. He turned and walked away; the two younger knights went with him.

“Wait!” I called. When they turned back toward me I directed the young boys standing off by the woodpile to bring me the thickest, hardest log they could find.

It took two of the lads to carry the massive log to the center of the courtyard, their legs tottering under the load. As I directed them to stand it on end, I saw Sir Bors came up beside Gawain, a skeptical scowl on his scarred face.

I trotted my horse back to the main gate, then spurred him into an all-out charge, drawing my sword as the steed galloped madly across the packed dirt.

With one swing I split the log in half.

Gawain and the other knights seemed impressed—but only a little.

“You’d make a good woodcutter,” Gawain joked as I got down from the horse.

“Don’t you understand?” I said. “With the stirrups to hold you in the saddle you could charge into the enemy at full speed and hit with all the power of a thunderbolt.”

“We’ve never used stirrups before,” said Bors. “Don’t see why we need ’em now.”

“Because they can multiply the force of your attack!” I insisted, almost pleading with him to open his mind.

But Bors raised his thick-muscled right arm, crisscrossed with scars, and said, “This is all the force I need in battle. I’ve killed hundreds of Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Angles—all with this strong right arm. I don’t need fancy contraptions to help keep me in my saddle.”

“But—”

Gawain laughed gently. “Use your stirrups if you want to, Orion. If that’s the Sarmatian way, then go right ahead. But we don’t need such tricks.”

I felt crushed. They didn’t understand what I was offering them. I looked up toward Merlin’s aerie, but neither the wizard nor Arthur was still watching me. I trotted the horse back to the stables and alit.

I handed the horse to a grinning stableboy, wondering what I could do to convince these men that stirrups would allow them to hit their enemies with the full force of a charging steed, instead of milling into battle slowly and hoping they could stay mounted by gripping the horse with their legs—while their enemies had plenty of time to fight back.

Out in the courtyard I saw Arthur standing by the blacksmith, talking. I went to him. The blacksmith shied away from me, anger and fear plain to see on his heavily bearded face.

Arthur was fingering the spear point still embedded deep in the timber.

“I thought you were going to kill yourself,” he said to me, “racing across the courtyard like that.”

I made myself grin ruefully. “I’m sure the smith thought I was going to kill him.”

Arthur laughed lightly. “He did look petrified, didn’t he?”

“My lord, what I’m trying to show—”

“I understand, Orion,” said Arthur. “Those little things on your feet allowed you to stay in the saddle even when you hit hard enough to shatter your spear.”

He was no fool, this young knight.

I replied, “It could turn your knights into a powerful battle force, my lord.”

“If only they would listen to reason,” he said.

“You are their appointed leader. Can’t you make them accept this new idea?”

He shook his head slowly. “I am their leader, true: appointed by the High King to direct the defense of this fort. But I can’t force them to do anything.”

“But—”

“This isn’t Rome, my friend,” Arthur said quietly, sadly. “These knights are freeborn Celts. They don’t bend to authority. They follow a leader only as long as they wish to. It’s the curse of the Celts: they treasure freedom even in the face of disaster.”

“Freedom is hardly a curse, my lord,” I said.

“Yes, perhaps. But discipline is something that we sadly lack.”

“If only one or two of them would try the stirrups,” I said. “That would show the others what an advantage they are.”

Arthur smiled at me, the warmth of true friendship in his eyes. “I will try them with you, friend Orion. We will sally out against the Saxons together and show them all what we can do.”

8

“Absolutely not!” Bors thundered. “Your uncle would have my guts for his garters if I permitted it!”

“Then I’ll go alone,” Arthur said, “with no one beside me but my lowly squire.” He nodded in my direction.

“You’ll get yourself killed!”

We were standing in Arthur’s chamber, nothing more than a small room made of rude logs at the bottom of the fort’s lone tower. Its floor was packed earth, its ceiling of roughly planed timbers a bare few inches above my head.

Arthur did not argue with the surly Bors. He merely smiled his boyish smile and said gently, “But if you came with us, then you’d probably be killed along with me and you wouldn’t have to face Ambrosius.”

Bors went so red in the face that the scar along his cheek stood out like a white line. He was speechless.

“You will come with me,” Arthur prodded, “won’t you?”

With a great fuming gasp of exasperation, Bors growled, “You’re determined to do this, are you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur. “I am.”

“Then I have no choice, do I?”

Arthur’s face lit up with delight. “You’ll come?”

Nodding sourly, Bors said, “I’ll come with you.”

“Fine!” Arthur exclaimed. “Now let’s see how many of the others will come.”

I worked all that night, going without sleep to make seven sets of stirrups and spurs. By the time the sun had climbed almost to its noontime high, Arthur gathered his knights around him in the courtyard and told them what he proposed to do.

Most of the men shook their heads warily, not trusting these Sarmatian innovations to be of any real use against the teeming hordes of barbarians outside the fort’s walls.

“We sallied out against the Saxons three nights ago and it did little good,” said Sir Peredur, his arm still wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage from that fight.

“But this will be different,” Arthur urged. “We will strike them like avenging angels.”

“I prefer to meet the barbarians from behind these stout walls,” Sir Kay said, in his booming, bombastic voice. “Let them come to us.”

The gathered knights nodded to one another and muttered their agreement.

Arthur turned to Gawain. “Sir knight, will you let Sir Bors and I ride into the Saxon midst alone?”

Gawain grinned like a man who knew he was being outwitted. “By God, never! Where you lead, Arthur, Gawain will follow. Right into the mouth of hell, if needs be!”

Arthur clasped his shoulder thankfully.

In the end, only five of the knights agreed to join Arthur’s sally. I handed out six pairs of spurs and rigged seven horses with stirrups, plus my own, hoping we could find a seventh to join us.

One by one I led the horses out into the courtyard. One by one the knights mounted—some of them obviously with great reluctance. The seventh horse remained without a rider. I held the seventh pair of spurs in my hands, waiting.

“Is there no one here who will join us?” Arthur called out.

The knights and squires standing in the courtyard shuffled uneasily, guiltily, but none moved toward us.

Until one of the squires, a slightly built youth, pushed through the crowd and said, “I will go with you, sir, if you will have me.”

Arthur smiled down at him. At first I thought Arthur would turn the lad away because he was so young, but then I realized that Arthur himself was barely more than a stripling.

Turning to Sir Kay, who still stood stubbornly off to one side, Arthur commanded, “Kay, find this squire chain mail, shield, and helmet.” Then he leaned toward me and said, “Give him the last set of spurs.”

In a few minutes the lad was mounted on the seventh horse, armed with coat of mail, a helmet that wobbled on his narrow shoulders, a dented, patched shield, a sword that seemed too big for his delicate hands, and a long spear.

I could no longer see Arthur’s face, hidden by his helmet, but his voice rang out clearly: “Follow me, men, and we will drive the invaders back into the sea!”

9

The fort’s gates creaked open, and the eight of us pricked our mounts into a thundering charge. For a brief instant I wondered what the Golden One was thinking. Was I playing into his hands and sending Arthur out to his death?

Not while I breathe, I swore to myself. I’ll die before I’ll let Arthur be killed.

As always in battle, the world around me seemed to slow down into a lethargic dreamy languor. My senses raced into overdrive, adrenaline flooding my arteries, everything around me seen in microscopically crisp detail.

The barbarian host had hurriedly formed a battle line as soon as they heard the fort’s gates begin to creak. They were standing waiting for us as we charged down the hill, hard-muscled men bare to the waist gripping their swords and axes, round wooden shields on their arms, long blond braids running down their powerful chests.

I saw spittle form and drip in slow motion from the foaming mouth of Arthur’s mount, at my left side. He was crouched forward in his saddle, spear leveled, weight on his stirrups. I picked out one of the Saxon warriors and aimed my spear at his chest.

The barbarian tactic for dealing with a cavalry charge was to absorb the impact with as many men as possible and then, once the horsemen had slowed down, to bring in more men from the flanks to swarm the riders under.

But this time we didn’t slow down. Arthur was the first to strike, snapping a Saxon’s head off his shoulders with the power of his thundering charger behind the point of his spear. I rammed my spear clear through my man’s shield and hit him squarely in the chest, wrenched the spear free, and charged into the next rank. I could hear our seven men roaring as they drove through the barbarian battle line like a hot knife through butter, and the death screams of the invaders as those long spears crushed the life out of them.

We smashed through their battle line, wheeled, and charged into them again. This time they broke and scattered before us, wailing with sudden fear.

“Stay together!” Arthur bellowed, and we rode as one terrifying fist of death with seven long spears that smashed flesh and bone wherever they struck.

The barbarians were scurrying away from us like rats, running in every direction, desperately trying to avoid our bloody spear points. But no matter how fast they ran, our steeds were faster. Spears broke, and knights pulled out their shining swords with the hiss of metal on metal. Those blades licked out the life of every man they reached.

I was spattered with enemy blood up to my thighs; my sword was red and dripping.

“Look!” I called to Arthur. “Up on the ridge.”

A small band of mounted warriors stood on the crest of the ridge, wearing helmets that bore horns and shone with gold and jewels.

“Aelle!” shouted Arthur. “He who styles himself king of Britain.”

He spurred his mount up the slope toward the Saxon leader and his band of picked guards. I charged up after him, leaving Gawain and Bors and the others to complete the rout of the terrified invaders.

I wondered how wise it was for Arthur to charge against nearly a dozen mounted warriors, but he was swinging Excalibur over his head, yelling wildly and spurring his steed up the slope. I charged after him.

For several eternally long moments we raced up toward the crest of the ridge. I could see, in slow motion, the troubled looks Aelle’s men were giving each other. Their horses shifted and stamped, as if sensing the riders’ unease. They all looked toward Aelle. The old man whom they had elected Bretwalda sat on his mount, wide-eyed with shock and sudden terror, stunned at what had happened to his warrior horde, shattered by the charge of a mere eight horsemen.

I expected them to charge downhill at us, eleven against two. Instead, Aelle abruptly yanked at his reins and turned away from us. He and his men disappeared behind the ridge’s crest.

By the time Arthur and I reached the crest they were already halfway across the glade below, galloping for their lives.

Arthur reined in his mount. “No sense chasing after them, Orion,” he said firmly. “Our mounts are tired, theirs fresh.”

I turned back toward the plain before Amesbury fort. The invading barbarian army was gone, run away, scattered to the four winds. Arthur’s knights were trotting their spent horses slowly up toward us.

“You’ve won a great victory, my lord,” I said.

Arthur pulled the heavy helmet off his head and shook his thick sandy hair free.

“Thanks to you,” he answered, smiling broadly, “and your Sarmatian tricks.”

“It was your courage and leadership that won the battle, my lord. Without those qualities, my ‘tricks’ would have been mere scraps of iron.”

Gawain was grinning widely as we walked our mounts back to the fort. “They won’t be back,” he predicted. “Not for a long time.”

Arthur was also in a boyishly jovial mood. “Did you see old Aelle run away! One glimpse of Excalibur and he turned tail!”

Even Bors was pleased. “My lord,” he said to Arthur, “you should note the bravery of this youngster.” He pointed to the squire who had volunteered to join us. “He fought like Saint Michael the Archangel himself.”

The lad drooped his chin timidly, hardly daring to look at Arthur.

“Don’t be shy, youngster,” said Arthur. “Praise from Sir Bors is as rare as snow in July.”

Everyone laughed, except the youngster.

10

Once inside the fort, the knights began to hand their shields and weapons to their squires—while the knights who had remained behind watched in envious, shamefaced silence.

The youngster walked through the men to Arthur, and held out the spurs he had worn.

“Here, my lord. Thank you for allowing me to wear them.”

“Keep them,” Arthur said. “You went into battle a lowly squire, but your courage and skill demands better for you. Kneel.”

Dumbfounded, the boy dropped to one knee.

Arthur drew out Excalibur, still caked with barbarian blood. Then he hesitated.

“I don’t know your name,” he said.

“Lancelot, my lord.”

Arthur smiled and tapped him on each shoulder with the blade, leaving two dark red smudges.

“Rise, Sir Lancelot. And welcome to the company of knighthood.”

Lancelot’s mouth hung open. He swallowed visibly before he could utter, “Bless you, my lord.”

The other knights crowded around to congratulate the lad.

But that night, as I unrolled my sleeping blanket in the shadows of Amesbury’s palisade, I thought I heard in the far-off echoes of my mind the Golden One laughing mockingly and saying, “The seed of destruction has been sown, Orion. Arthur’s days are numbered.”

Not while I live, I answered silently. Then I lay down to sleep. But as soon as I closed my eyes I felt a wave of utter cold take hold of me and I was falling, falling through a black infinity.

Interlude

I opened my eyes and saw clouds scudding past in a windswept sky above me. I was lying on the hard wet planks of the deck of a ship that was heaving up and down sickeningly. I smelled the salt tang of the sea and the stench of vomit and human sweat. Our little cockleshell bobbed in the choppy waters of the Channel so hard that we were all soaked to the skin from the spray coming over the gunwales.

“Up! Wake up!” a clear tenor voice called. “All hands to their stations!”

Scrambling to my feet, I saw my crewmates staring across the water at the awesome procession of Spanish men-of-war heading through the Channel for Gravelines, on the Belgian shore.

“There they are, lads,” said our skipper, pointing. “Take a good look at the Pope-kissing bastards.”

He was young to be a ship’s captain, but then our ship was just an unarmed riverboat, wallowing in the swells of the heaving sea. As I looked around at the rest of us, I saw that they were all barely old enough to start their beards.

How or why I was here I didn’t know. My last memory was of Arthur and his victory over Aelle and his Saxon host at Amesbury fort. Somehow I was now aboard a small English merchantman, part of a pitiful little squadron of ships that had been sent out to face the mighty Spanish Armada.

Britain was again threatened with invasion, and there was our youthful skipper grinning defiantly at the enemy. He looked very much like the Arthur I had known from a thousand years earlier: broad of shoulder, handsome features with gold-flecked amber eyes and the beginnings of a light brown beard.

It was near sunset. The sky was low and glowering red; a storm was brewing to the west out in the wild Atlantic. The Spanish fleet proceeded through the Channel in a stately line, big, square-backed galleons leading the way, followed by smaller galleys, their oars sweeping steadily, like rows of metronomes.

“Some o’ them sweeps is Englishmen,” said the sailor next to me, his voice harder than his round, youthful face. “They caught me brother off Jamaica last year, chained ’im to the oars.”

“Do you think he might be aboard one of those galleys?” I asked.

The youngster nodded grimly. “Could be. But if he is, drownin’ in th’ Channel’s better’n years as a bloody galley slave.”

“Quit the chatter and look lively now!” the skipper commanded. “Get about your business, men, and best be quick about it!”

Our little Minerva was to be a fireship. We were to set her ablaze and sail her into the Spanish ships when they tried to moor at Gravelines. The plan was to scatter the Armada so that Drake and Frobisher and the other Seahawks could deal with the big Spanish men-of-war individually.

We set about hauling the tinder and firewood up from below deck, each of us casting uneasy glances at the rowboats we would use to try to get away once we had lit the fires.

It was a desperate plan. Although the ramshackle collection of British ships sailing out from harbors all along the Channel actually outnumbered the Armada, the Spanish fleet was far superior in firepower and its ships were much bigger than ours. They were slower and less maneuverable than our tumble homes, and that could make all the difference in the tricky waters of the Channel.

“Smoothly, lads, smoothly,” Arthur coaxed us as we worked. “We’re going to give them hell.”

I thought it might be the other way around. Our only hope was to be nimble enough to avoid their broadsides, and I knew we couldn’t be lucky enough to escape them forever.

As if to prove my point, the nearest galleon fired a salvo at us. Even at the distance between us the roar of their guns shook the air. I heard the deep growling whistle of cannonballs swooping overhead, like evil meteors intent on smashing us to splinters. But instead they soared past us and splashed harmlessly into the sea, although one of them pocked through our topsail.

“They’re just trying to warn us off,” Arthur tried to reassure us. “Pay them no mind.”

“Pay ’em no mind, eh?” grumbled the sailor hauling timbers next to me. “Not ’til they sink us, by damn.”

All through the deepening twilight our skipper kept us on the edge of the galleons’ cannon range while the sun sank below the horizon and darkness settled on the choppy waters. We could see the lights of Gravelines low on the horizon in the distance and the lanterns along the decks of the Armada’s ships.

The hours stretched on. Arthur had us check the rowboats, make sure their oars were in place.

“Sir Francis and the other Seahawks will attack once the fireships have scattered the Spaniards,” Arthur said confidently.

“Aye,” whispered my grumpy fellow sailor, “and we’ll be sittin’ in the bloody dinghies, tryin’ to row our way back t’ Dover.”

I smiled grimly at him. “That’s better than being chained to a galley’s oars, isn’t it?”

It was too dark to see the expression on his face, but I heard his reply: “Bloody suicide job, that’s what we’ve got.”

Arthur must have heard him, because he said into the darkness, “We’ve a hard task, lads, true enough, but England needs our best and nothing less.”

As the night wore on the wind freshened. “That storm coming in from the Atlantic,” Arthur said, his voice brimming with youthful hope, “is going to blow our little fireball right into their midst. You’ll see!”

“And we’ll hafta row against the wind,” my companion groused. “We’ll be lucky if we make landfall in France.”

Clouds were scudding across the face of the moon, making the night even darker. Stars winked out as the clouds built up.

“Get some rest, men,” said Arthur, moving through the darkness among us. “Try to sleep for a while. I’ll stand watch and when the time comes to light the fire, I’ll wake you.”

“That’s for sure,” my sour-voiced companion whispered hoarsely.

I stretched out on the wet planks of the deck and closed my eyes. And again felt the clutch of absolute cold, unfathomable darkness. I was hurtling through spacetime again as the universe shifted.