But Eldared had no wish to die; in his mind there would always be another day. With Cael beside him he fled the field, the Brigantes streaming after him. Horsa looked at his fleeing allies and shook his head; he had never liked Eldared. He glanced at the sky.
“Brothers in arms, brothers in Valhalla,” he said to the man beside him.
“Let the swords drink one last time,” replied the man.
The Saxons charged, almost cleaving the wedge, but fury and courage were no match for discipline. The Roman line swung out like the horns of a bull, encircling the surging Saxons. Victorinus and Aquila linked forces behind them, and the battle became a massacre.
Uther could contain himself no longer. Pushing his way to the front line, he snatched up a gladius and a shield and stepped into the fray, cutting a path toward the giant Saxon leader. Horsa saw the fighting figure in the silver breastplate and black-plumed helm and grinned. He, too, pushed his way forward, shouldering aside his own warriors. Behind him came the banner bearer and a score of carles. The men to the left and right of Uther fell. The prince stabbed an attacker with his gladius, which became embedded in the warrior’s side. Dropping his shield, he drew the Sword of Cunobelin and began to cleave his way forward with slashing double-handed strokes, moving ever ahead of the square.
Horsa leapt to meet him, and their swords clashed. All around them the battle continued, until at last only Horsa and Uther still fought. The Saxon army had been destroyed utterly. Several Romans moved in, ready to kill the giant war leader, but Uther waved them back.
Horsa grinned again as he saw the massed Roman ranks about him. His banner bearer was dead, but in death he had plunged the banner staff into the ground, and the black raven still fluttered above him.
He stepped back, lowering his sword for a moment.
“By the gods,” he said to Uther, “you are an enemy worth having.”
“I make a better friend,” Uther responded.
“You are offering me life?”
“Yes.”
“I cannot accept. My friends are waiting for me in Valhalla.” Horsa lifted his sword in salute. “Come,” he said, “join me on the swan’s path to glory. We will walk together into Odin’s hall of heroes.” He leapt forward, his sword flashing in the dying light, but Uther blocked the blow, sending a reverse cut that half severed the giant’s neck. Horsa fell, losing his grip on his sword. His hand scrabbled for it, his eyes desperate. Uther knew that many Saxons believed they could not enter Valhalla if they died without a sword in their hands. He dropped to his knees, pressing his own sword into the dying man’s hand as Horsa’s eyes closed for the last time.
The prince rose, retrieving the Sword of Cunobelin, and ordered Horsa’s body to be draped in the raven banner.
Lucius Aquila stepped forward, bowing low.
“Who are you, sir?” he asked.
The prince removed his helm. “I am Uther Pendragon, High King of Britain.”
Epilogue
UTHER RETURNED IN triumph to Camulodunum, where he was crowned High King. The following spring he led the Ninth Legion into the Lands of the Wall, smashing the Brigante army in two battles at Vindolanda and Trimontium.
Eldared was captured and put to death, while Cael escaped by ship with two hundred retainers, sailing south to link with Hengist. After he received the news of the death of his son, Hengist had the Brigantes blood-eagled on the trees of Anderida, their ribs ripped open for the crows to devour.
Moret offered allegiance to Uther, who left him as the Brigante overlord.
Prasamaccus returned to the ruins of Calcaria and there found Helga, who was living once more with the servants of Victorinus. Their reunion was joyous. With the ten pounds of gold Uther had given him, Prasamaccus bought a large measure of land and set to breeding horses for the king’s new cohors equitana.
Uther himself promoted Victorinus to head the legions, barring the Ninth, which the king kept as his own.
During the four bloody years that followed Uther harried the Saxons, Jutes, and newly arrived Danes, building a reputation as a warrior king who would never know defeat. Laitha remained a proud yet dutiful wife and rarely spoke of her days with Culain lach Feragh.
All that changed one summer’s morning five years after the battle of Eboracum …
A lone rider came to the castle at Camulodunum. He was tall and dark-haired with eyes the color of storm clouds. In his hands he carried a silver lance. He strode through the long hall, halting before the doors of oak and bronze.
A Thracian servant approached him. “What is your business here?”
“I have come to see the king.”
“He is with his counselors.”
“Go to him and tell him the Lance Lord is here. He will see me.”
Culain waited as the man timidly opened the door and slipped inside.
Uther and Laitha were sitting at an oval table around which also sat Victorinus, Gwalchmai, Severinus, Prasamaccus, and Maedhlyn, the Lord Enchanter.
The servant bowed low. “There is a man who wishes to see you, sire. He says his name is Lancelot.”
Coming to bookstores everywhere in July 1997!
THE LAST GUARDIAN
The Stones of Power
Book Four
by David Gemmell
Read on for an excerpt from its opening chapter …
SOUTH OF THE PLAGUE LANDS—A.D. 2341
BUT HE DID not die. The flesh around the bullet wound over his hip froze as the temperature dropped to thirty below zero, and the distant spires of Jerusalem blurred and changed, becoming snow-shrouded pine. Ice had formed on his beard, and his heavy black double-shouldered topcoat glistened white in the moonlight. Shannow swayed in the saddle, trying to focus on the city he had sought for so long, but it was gone. As his horse stumbled, Shannow’s right hand gripped the saddle pommel and the wound in his side flared with fresh pain.
He turned the black stallion’s head, steering the beast downhill toward the valley.
Images rushed through his mind: Karitas, Ruth, Donna; the hazardous journey across the Plague Lands and the battles with the Hellborn; the monstrous ghost ship wrecked on a mountain. Guns and gunfire, war and death.
The blizzard found new life, and the wind whipped freezing snow into Shannow’s face. He could not see where he was heading, and his mind wandered. He knew that life was ebbing from his body with each passing second, but he had neither the strength nor the will to fight on.
He remembered the farm and his first sight of Donna, standing in the doorway with an ancient crossbow in her hands. She had mistaken Shannow for a brigand and had feared for her life and that of her son, Eric. Shannow had never blamed her for that mistake. He knew what people saw when the Jerusalem Man came riding—a tall, gaunt figure in a flat-crowned leather hat, a man with cold, cold eyes that had seen too much of death and despair. Always it was the same. People would stand and stare at his expressionless face; then their eyes would be drawn down to his guns, the terrible weapons of the Thundermaker.
Yet Donna Taybard had been different. She had taken Shannow into her hearth and her home, and for the first time in two weary decades the Jerusalem Man had known happiness.
But then had come the brigands and the warmakers and finally the Hellborn. Shannow had gone against them all for the woman he loved, only to see her wed another.
Now he was alone again, dying on a frozen mountain in an uncharted wilderness. And strangely, he did not care. The wind howled about horse and man, and Shannow fell forward across the stallion’s neck, lost in the siren song of the blizzard. The horse was mountain-bred; he did not like the howling wind or the biting snow. Now he angled his way through the trees into the lee of a rock face and followed a deer trail down to the mouth of a high lava tunnel that stretched through the ancient volcanic range. It was warmer there, and the stallion plodded on, aware of the dead weight across his back. This disturbed him, for his rider was always in balance and could signal his commands with the slig
htest pressure or flick of the reins.
The stallion’s wide nostrils flared as the smell of smoke came to him. He halted and backed up, his iron hooves clattering on the rocky ground. A dark shadow moved in front of him … in panic he reared, and Shannow tumbled from the saddle. A huge taloned hand caught the reins, and the smell of lion filled the tunnel. The stallion tried to rear again, to lash out with iron-shod hooves, but he was held tight and a soft, deep voice whispered to him, a gentle hand stroking his neck. Calmed by the voice, he allowed himself to be led into a deep cave, where a campfire had been set within a circle of round flat stones. He waited calmly as he was tethered to a jutting stone at the far wall; then the figure was gone.
Outside the cave Shannow groaned and tried to roll to his belly, but he was stricken by pain and deep cold. He opened his eyes to see a hideous face looming over him. Dark hair framed the head and face, and a pair of tawny eyes gazed down at him; the nose was wide and flat, the mouth a deep slash rimmed with sharp fangs. Shannow, unable to move, could only glare at the creature.
Taloned hands moved under his body, lifting him easily, and he was carried like a child into a cave and laid gently by the fire. The creature fumbled at the ties on Shannow’s coat, but the thick pawlike hands could not cope with the frozen knots. Talons hissed out to sever the leather thongs, and Shannow felt his coat being eased from him. Slowly but with great care the creature removed his frozen clothing and covered him with a warm blanket. The Jerusalem Man faded into sleep—and his dreams were pain-filled.
Once more he fought the Guardian lord, Sarento, while the Titanic sailed on a ghostly sea and the Devil walked in Babylon. But this time Shannow could not win, and he struggled to survive as the sea poured into the stricken ship, engulfing him. He could hear the cries of drowning men, women, and children but could not save them. He awoke sweating and tried to sit. Pain ripped at his wounded side, and he groaned and sank back into his fever dreams.
He was riding toward the mountains when he heard a shot; he rode to the crest of a hill and gazed down on a farmyard where three men were dragging two women from their home. Drawing a pistol, Shannow kicked his stallion into a run and thundered toward the scene. When the men saw him, they flung the women aside and two of them drew flintlocks from their belts; the third ran at him with a knife. He dragged on the reins, and the stallion reared. Shannow timed his first shot well, and a brigand was punched from his feet. The knife man leapt, but Shannow swung in the saddle and fired point-blank, the bullet entering the man’s forehead and exiting from the neck in a bloody spray. The third man loosed a shot that ricocheted from the pommel of Shannow’s saddle to tear into his hip. Ignoring the sudden pain, the Jerusalem Man fired twice. The first shell took the brigand high in the shoulder, spinning him; the second hammered into his skull.
In the sudden silence Shannow sat his stallion, gazing at the women. The elder of the two approached him, and he could see the fear in her eyes. Blood was seeping from his wound and dripping to the saddle, but he sat upright as she neared.
“What do you want of us?” she asked.
“Nothing, lady, save to help you.”
“Well,” she said, her eyes hard, “you have done that, and we thank you.” She backed away, still staring at him. He knew she could see the blood, but he could not—would not—beg for aid.
“Good day to you,” he said, swinging the stallion and heading away.
The younger girl ran after him. She was blond and pretty, and her face was leathered by the sunlight and the hardship of wilderness farming. She gazed up at him with large blue eyes.
“I am sorry,” she told him. “My mother distrusts all men. I am so sorry.”
“Get away from him, girl!” shouted the older woman, and she fell back.
Shannow nodded. “She probably has good reason,” he said. “I am sorry I cannot stay and help you bury these vermin.”
“You are wounded. Let me help you.”
“No. There is a city near here, I am sure. It has white spires and gates of burnished gold. There they will tend me.”
“There are no cities,” she said.
“I will find it.” He touched his heels to the stallion’s flanks and rode from the farmyard.
A hand touched him, and he awoke. The bestial face was leaning over him.
“How are you feeling?” The voice was deep and slow and slurred, and the question had to be repeated twice before Shannow could understand it.
“I am alive thanks to you. Who are you?”
The creature’s great head tilted. “Good. Usually the question is, What are you. My name is Shir-ran. You are a strong man to live so long with such a wound.”
“The ball passed through me,” said Shannow. “Can you help me sit up?”
“No. Lie there. I have stitched the wounds front and back, but my fingers are not what they were. Lie still and rest tonight. We will talk in the morning.”
“My horse?”
“Safe. He was a little frightened of me, but we understand each other now. I fed him the grain you carried in your saddlebags. Sleep, man.”
Shannow relaxed and moved his hand under the blankets to rest on the wound over his right hip. He could feel the tightness of the stitches and the clumsy knots. There was no bleeding, but he was worried about the fibers from his coat that had been driven into his flesh. It was these that killed more often than ball or shell, aiding gangrene and poisoning the blood.
“It is a good wound,” said Shir-ran softly, as if reading his mind. “The issue of blood cleansed it, I think. But here in the mountains wounds heal well. The air is clean. Bacteria find it hard to survive at thirty below.”
“Bacteria?” whispered Shannow, his eyes closing.
“Germs … the filth that causes wounds to fester.”
“I see. Thank you, Shir-ran.”
And Shannow slept without dreams.
David Gemmell, Ghost King
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