Pendragon and the Sorcerer's Despair (Pendragon Legend Book 5) Page 5

  Merlin looked at him as well.

  “I won’t,” he said.

  Igraine turned and galloped away, and the column started moving again, around Merlin.

  He looked about him and saw the stable master’s son.

  “Ryon!” He shouted.

  The boy looked at him.

  Merlin swung down from his saddle amidst the crowd, and the boy ran over to him.

  “Yes, my prince?”

  “Don’t call me that,” he said. “I’m Merlin.”

  The boy nodded hesitantly.

  “Here,” Merlin offered him the reins. “Keep an eye on her for me.”

  Ryon took the reins.

  “I will, my—Merlin. I will.”

  Merlin nodded and turned to see the crowd.

  Women and children walked amongst wagons bearing the wounded. They wore bloody bandages around their heads and arms and legs, and many of them seemed asleep.

  There were not many carts among them, so many more of the wounded had to hobble along, holding onto friends and family.

  One man’s face was black and red on the right side, with boils and welts all across. His arm was slung around the neck of a young man with a burly neck and burly arms. His right eye was closed and sealed shut by dry pus, and his scalp was scorched and black, with a chunk of his hair missing.

  The burns went all the way down his neck and Merlin couldn’t tell if they ended at the collar of his tunic or continued on.

  He walked up to him and looked at the big lad.

  “What is your name?” He asked.

  He stopped, and the burned man’s red eye flicked open.

  “Henry,” the burly lad answered.

  “What’s his name?” Merlin looked at the man he was helping.

  “Mykal,” Henry said. “He’s my father.”

  “Mykal,” Merlin said to him. “You’re going to be alright. I’m going to heal you.”

  Henry looked at his father.

  His half-burnt lips began to move.

  Merlin couldn’t tell what he was trying to say.

  Henry brought his ear close, and then he looked at Merlin.

  “He says thank you.”

  Merlin nodded, then he looked at him.

  “Alright, Mykal,” Merlin said, “you just have to stand there.”

  He placed his hand on the man’s tunic and closed his eyes.

  “Hear me, Gaea,” he muttered, too quietly for even Henry, who was standing right before him, to hear. “For I call unto you not for my own enrichment or benefit, but to ease the pain of another person. Here me, Gaea, for Mykal and his son, and for the soul of a good man.”

  He opened his eyes and found Henry looking on in awe as his father’s wounds healed, as his skin regrew over his face. The blood and ooze were still there, but the wounds were disappearing.

  The welts on his scalp all went away, leaving smooth and clear skin.

  Merlin retrieved his waterskin and a silver-embroidered handkerchief. He soaked the cloth with some of the water and used it to wipe away the blood and crust from the older man’s person.

  When it was done, Mykal blinked and looked at him.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “What can we do to repay you?” Henry asked him.

  “Just keep believing,” he said.

  Henry straightened.

  He nodded.

  Merlin turned to the next wounded he saw.

  The boy was a little lad, no more than ten-and-two. He had a great gash in his upper arm that was bandaged with a bloody cloth.

  Merlin removed it and healed the wound within seconds.

  He and his mother thanked him and then Merlin moved onto the next wounded person. Her arm was suspended from her neck and Merlin could see the spot where the blade had been driven through her shoulder.

  He went up to her. The blade hadn’t gone all the way through it seemed, and there was no infection. It was not as bad as some of the other wounds that he could see, but he healed it all the same, and moved on.

  By nightfall that day, the column had covered ten miles, and Merlin had healed a thousand people.

  He was a long way from the head of the column when the sentries flanking the column forwarded the order to halt amidst the gathering darkness.

  As wagon-drivers unhitched their horses and tethered them, and those who had been walking sank onto the ground with relief, Merlin turned and walked toward one of the soldiers. He carried a spear and boasted a leather vest embroidered with the crest of the Megolin clan, and a chainmail hauberk.

  “Where is the prisoner?” Merlin asked him.

  “In that wagon, my prince,” he said, pointing.

  Merlin looked and saw the old man shackled to an iron ring in the floor of the wagon.

  He set off towards him.

  As he walked, the people around him set up their tents.

  Megolin still didn’t allow any fires, so the darkness was almost hindering, but Merlin and all the others acclimated soon enough.

  The wounded lay on the ground with their eyes closed as the less injured or younger ones set up the pavilions.

  People started lining up to collect their supper from the baggage train. Baggage master Royce had let the bread dry for the first few hours of the day, so now it wasn’t as soggy as it had been at dawn. So, Merlin saw people walking away with pewter plates of bread and some other things.

  He turned and headed to the food carts to ask for one.

  The old man scooped some bread out of one bag, a few slices of cheese from another, and some roast meat from the boar the hunters had brought back that morning.

  Merlin walked away with the plate and towards the wagon where the old man had been shackled.

  The man’s eyes flicked open at the sound of his approach and locked onto his own eyes that glowed yellow.

  “My prince,” he said. As he moved, the links of his chains rattled and clinked.

  Merlin stopped before him. “I brought you food,” he said, holding out the plate.

  The man didn’t say anything. He didn’t even move.

  From the rest of the column, they could hear the people downing their supper like famished beasts.

  Then a human voice broke the sounds of the woods.

  “My son is dead,” he said. “My home, burned and looted by barbarians. And I lost me wife years ago, so why should I keep on living?”

  Merlin looked at him. “Because you are still on this earth,” he said. “Because you are part of something far larger than any of us.”

  The old man’s chains rattled as he moved again. “I don’t care about any of that,” he said. “I just want my son back.”

  Silence hung between them once more, until the old man said, “But I’ll never get him back.”

  Merlin placed the plate of food on the wagon and turned to the guard standing beside it.

  “Release him,” he ordered.

  The man turned to the side of the wagon, his ring of keys jingling. Then he tried the first one, then the second. When he turned the third one, the lock clicked, and the man’s chains fell away and clattered onto the oak planks.

  The old man rubbed his wrists and looked at Merlin.

  “Why are you freeing me?” He said.

  “Because being a grieving father is no crime. I admit, I could have saved your son, and I didn’t, and that he will never return to us. But he is not gone, not truly. His spirit remains, and for him, and for the woman you loved, you must fight this war.”

  “What war?” The old man said. “We’ve already lost.”

  “No,” Merlin said. “That foreigner you were speaking of…is Arthur Pendragon, the one the sorcerers of old predicted would reunite the Isle and return peace to Britannia.”

  “
Huns are here,” the old man said. “Demetia is burned. The north marches on all of us. We’d be fools to trust prophecies and the like.”

  “This isn’t some legend,” Merlin said. “Arthur is the chosen one. He doesn’t know it yet. But he is. And this war is not between Highlanders and Demetians, or even Britons against Huns. It’s about light and dark. And we will stand for the light, and Gaea curse us all who stand by and watch the shadow of evil fall upon the world.”

  Merlin paused.

  “Your son is still alive,” Merlin said. “His soul lives on, just as the soul of every other who ascends to the Starhearth. I say again, for him and the woman you loved, you must fight, because the light is what they stood for. I’ll leave you to your supper.”

  4

  Cornered

  Merlin didn’t return to his father’s tent that night, but communicated to him that he would be staying where he was.

  Seated amongst his people, Merlin forced himself to eat. Thankfully, it didn’t taste as foul as the water he had drunk the day before. Merlin felt somewhat comforted by that. It was proof that he was failing less. But regardless, the bile was still there, the bile of Arthur’s death, and the fate of the Isle that hung in the balance.

  It hangs in my hands, Merlin thought.

  Merlin knew Arthur would fulfill his destiny and bring peace and unity to the Isle, but he could not do that while he was dead, which only Merlin could reverse. And yet he was failing.

  When the ordeal that was supper was over, he laid out his bedroll and lay down, staring up at the canopy of the pine trees with his glowing, yellow eyes.

  “Tell me, Gaea,” he prayed. “How do I bring him back? How do I heal his soul?”

  Merlin remembered what Arthur had looked like when he met with him in Starhearth, what he had said.

  I am done with that world…nothing but grief and pain...all is lost…all is lost…

  Those words sounded ten times over in the confines of his mind, then a hundred times more, keeping him from sleep.

  And when he did manage to catch some rest, the nightmare returned.

  This time, Merlin could see an entire battlefield. Demetian, Caledonian, Rodwinian, and Astavonian banners, and the standards of all the other great clans of the Isle and the lesser ones as well, had all fallen. Some were anchored in the ground. One Demetian banner, its purple field scarred black by fire and dirt, hung from the haft that stood up diagonally from the ground.

  Suddenly, flakes began to drift past his face.

  Snow, he thought at first, but then he looked down and saw the flakes that had caked upon his sandals.

  Ash.

  Around him, small fires were burning. Wounded men, their hands and faces bloody and soot-stained, begged for mercy. And then Merlin saw the trees all around. They were all burning. The green leaves had all but burned away, and the withering barks spit and cracked as red embers swirled around them.

  And then Merlin heard a horn, a far-off and low roar, guttural and monstrous, like the growl of some ancient and terrible beast.

  Merlin found himself stirring, and caught glimpses of the canopy above him, but still the sound of the horn lingered. Only now it was much louder and of a far higher register.

  Its call echoed through the trees for a great many seconds, when Merlin’s eyes flicked open, and he bolted up.

  “Huns,” he said, his breath misting before him.

  He jumped up.

  “Wake up!” He shouted. “All of you! Wake up!”

  At once, people began stirring, and once they heard the horn, they jolted up and started running about frantically.

  Merlin looked around. The sky was turning a dark blue to the east. The sun would be upon them soon. If the Huns were smart, they would attack from the west. During the day, getting their enemy to face the sun would have been the best strategy to attack a mass of wounded refugees, most of whom weren’t soldiers, but at night, darkness was their friend.

  They would attack from the west, Merlin realized.

  But, that means they’re right before us. Somehow, they got ahead. We’d be marching right into them.

  “Prince Merlin!” He heard someone shout.

  He turned to see a Royal Guard ahorse.

  “His Grace commands you to return to the front. The Huns are here!

  “Sir!” Merlin yelled as he ran over, “we need to change direction. If the Huns are attacking from the west, these people will be marching right into them!”

  “His Grace has seen to that!” The Guard bellowed. “Now we must get to the front!”

  Merlin held the saddle and swung up behind the Royal Guard.

  The man wheeled the horse around beside the column as other Guards turned the people north.

  He snapped the reins, and the garron galloped off, neighing, kicking up mud and leaves with its iron hooves.

  The horns had gone silent now, but shouts and screams and the far-off clangor of steel had replaced them.

  As they drew near to the site of battle, plunging towards the still dark side of the world, Merlin glimpsed steel swords and maces crashing down on oaken shields painted with the colors of Demetia. Men were shouting and screaming, and Merlin spotted Verovingian standing nearby, his devotions glowing blue. He held a greatsword, with blood splattered across its side.

  He turned to see Merlin fly off the saddle, his cloak billowing and roll in the dirt as the Royal Guard charged on, his sword drawn, and slashed at the first barbarian soldier as he reached their ranks.

  Merlin jumped up, his hands and face splattered with mud, and drew his weapon. He ran towards Verovingian, who followed him, and he slashed at one of the Huns.

  The magic of the sword flowed through his veins and paralyzed the barbarian, leaving him alive but motionless on the ground.

  He hacked at another, shearing through his fur skin cloak, but stopping when the blade met his skin. Then he slashed.

  The Huns were shrieking and howling, and one charged at him with his great ax held high.

  Merlin jumped aside just as the weapon swung and slashed the barbarian warrior’s arm.

  He fell like a bag of stones, dropping his weapon.

  Merlin looked around him.

  The Royal Guards were doing most of the fighting now. Their force of three hundred men had been at the back of the column, and were not here to help with the fight. But fifty Royal Guards were better than a hundred regular soldiers, even cavalry, and Merlin was certain they’d at least be able to hold out till the main force arrived.

  He searched for his father, looking here and there, trying to hear his voice if it was there to be heard.

  Slashing at Huns and cutting his way through the chaotic scene, he found neither army was fighting as one anymore. Each Demetian was fighting single combat with a Hun, struggling to stay alive.

  Merlin saw an ax crash through the oaken shield of one of the Royal Guards.

  It had nearly struck his head.

  Merlin ran towards the Hun as he growled and snarled, trying to wrench his blade free of the Demetian’s shield, and slashed his side.

  The man’s eyes widened, and then he fell over, sending the Royal Guard staggering back when he let go of the ax.

  The knight nodded at him and left to continue fighting.

  Within moments, Merlin turned at the sound of the three hundred soldiers thundering towards them, swords drawn, their cloaks rippling and armor glinting from the light of the rising sun.

  Merlin jumped aside and they collided with the Hun ranks, splitting their force in two.

  By the time the sun was completely above the horizon, the Hun army had been dispersed and the ones who survived were falling back.

  Merlin stood on the field of battle, surrounded by fallen Huns. Nestled on the carpet of leaves, the ground was littered with bloody weapons and splintered shie
lds.

  His own blade was lined with the blood of the Huns, but he had not killed anyone.

  Demetian soldiers walked about, checking to see if any of the Huns lying on the ground were still alive.

  “Merlin!” He heard his father bellow.

  He turned to see him standing a few yards away, his armor and cloak splattered with blood and mud.

  He walked up to him.

  “Father,” he greeted him.

  Megolin’s face looked as fierce as an autumn storm, dark and brooding as it was.

  “I’ll be holding a council meeting. I wish for you to attend.”

  Merlin knew his father was in no mood for argument right now, so he decided he would just comply.

  “As you wish, Father,” he said.

  They walked together back to the king’s pavilion. The purple tent had been splattered with blood and fallen Huns and Demetians alike lay around it.

  Merlin stopped when he realized that the Royal Guard lying face-up beside a Hun, his eyes staring blankly at the sky, was the same one who had sent for him when the battle began.

  Merlin clenched his jaw, then turned to walk into the tent.

  Igraine was sitting by the fire, watching the flames twitch and snap as the pine logs and twigs spit and cracked.

  Megolin sat at the trestle table, his helm resting on the planks, his whitening hair tousled and hung over his face.

  Merlin walked over and sat opposite to him.

  He looked around the tent.

  Nothing had been disturbed, which meant none of the Huns had managed to get in.

  Clyde shook Merlin out of his thoughts when he sauntered through the tent flaps, his face dotted with sweat.

  Merlin noticed he was bleeding from his upper arm. The blood had soaked his cloak, turning the purple a dark red, and a line of blood trailed down to his hand.

  “My lady, are you alright?” he asked Igraine.

  She looked at him and smiled sadly.

  “I am, and I thank you for your consideration.”

  “You’re wounded,” Megolin noted, looking at the trail of blood along the general’s arm.

  “It’s nothing, Your Grace,” he answered. “And no, Merlin, I do not want you to heal me.”