Excalibur

by Richard Gilliam, Edward E Kramer, Martin H. Greenberg

Genres: Fantasy Anthologies & Collections; Contemporary Fantasy; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

This book contains a collection of stories based on the legends of King Arthur. The stories range in time from Camelot to the present day.

Release date: October 31, 2009

Publisher: Aspect

Print pages: 470

Sample

DIANAL. PAXSON

They rode out across the moor just as dusk was falling, thirteen men, sitting their tough little ponies as easily as they had
when they served with the Sarmatian Nurneri, the best auxiliary cavalry Britannia could field. Every man of them had put in
his twenty years with the Legions before retiring to the vicus below the fort at Breme-tennacum. And yet, thought Hamytz-sar
as he moved into the center of the formation, though he had been born and bred here, he did not belong to this land.


With him the line of the Sword-bearers who had accompanied the Iazyges warriors that the Romans had settled in Britannia came
to an end. The last of Hamytz’s sons had died in Gallia as rival generals battled for the imperial diadem. He felt the baldric
that held the familiar weight of the Sword across his back slip, and hitched it forward. Who would carry it when his arm failed?
Who would call the spirits when his voice was still? Or would it matter? Would anything matter if Rome’s might failed and
the wild tribes came flooding in?


They breasted the rise, and for a moment the priest could
see the lay of the land—dim, heather-clad undulations of hillside with trees springing up wherever there was a little protection
from the wind. Low clouds were rolling in from the western sea; there would likely be rain by morning. That would not matter;
these men whose ancestors had roamed the steppes had a homing sense as acute as that of their ponies. They did not even need
to see the stars. Hamytz looked up—in the north country one was always most conscious of the great sweep of the sky—this evening
it was strewn with banners of fading flame like a dead battlefield.


Nor would the Painted People be bothered by a little rain, he thought then. They had never accepted the barrier that the emperor
Hadrian had thrown across the North to stop their raiding, and now that the Legions had been ordered back across the Narrow
Sea, only the veterans, settled on farmsteads near the forts where once they had served, stood between them and the rich lands
of the South. Once Britannia had lain secure beneath the peace of Rome, but Rome herself was beleaguered. Without men to man
it, the Wall was no more than an inconvenience. Still, things had been quiet for the past moon. There was no reason, Hamytz
told himself sternly, to think it might be this night that they would come.


The Dragon pennant fluttered on its pole, gold thread glinting in the last of the light, then sagged again as the riders plunged
down a winding watercourse, out of the wind. The ponies’ hooves rang on stone; the bones of earth were very near the surface
here. Hamytz straightened, a familiar tension beginning to build within him, and it seemed to him that the Sword grew heavier,
as if it were already beginning to draw down power.


The pace quickened. The ponies knew that soon they would be able to graze on the dry grass in the hollow. The cliff face above
it was a featureless blur in the half-light. Hamytz could barely make out the humped shape of the offering stone.



Uryzmag, in the lead, gave a soft command. As one the horses came to a halt in a semicircle. Hamytz dismounted, wincing a
little as his joints complained, and his horse was led away. Ruddy light glinted suddenly as torches were lit and set into
the ground. He heard an unhappy bleating as the bound goat was lifted from Arvgad’s saddle and laid down.


Silence fell, and after a moment Hamytz realized they were all watching him. He unpinned his cloak and laid it aside. Beneath
it, like the rest of them, he wore a warshirt made in the traditional way with overlapping scales carved from the hooves of
mares. And like theirs, his spangenhelm was worn with service and lovingly burnished. But fixed to its crest was a wolf’s
tail, to which were fastened amulets in the shapes of spearheads and tiny swords that chimed and clattered as he moved.


The other men grouped themselves around him. With fingers grown stiff from the damp air Hamytz fumbled with the firepot and
blew on the coal within until it glowed. A pinch from the bag of sacred herbs sent sweet smoke swirling past him. He took
a deep breath and felt his perceptions begin to alter, simultaneously more detached from ordinary things and more profoundly
aware. His knuckle joints no longer hurt, but he could hear each separate breath from the men around him, and the cry of an
owl above the crag, and more faintly, the voice of the boy as he quieted the grazing mares.


He could feel, as vividly as he sensed any of the other warriors, the presence of the Sword.

He picked up the pot of smoking herbs and moved around the circle, letting each man wash his hands in the purifying smoke
and breathe it in. The dull drumming of lance-butts striking the earth in unison started behind him, and the men began chanting
as they did before battle. Hamytz took a deep breath, feeling the familiar shift in his spirit.


Now he scarcely needed the torchlight, for each shrub and stone had its own glow. He could feel the power of the wolf
that was the totem of his god rising within him, and the spirit of the red dragon that flew from their standard, answering,
seeing it not as a wyrm but as his own people pictured it, with clawed legs, and wings.


He set down the pot and stood, bowed legs braced, facing the altar stone.

“I am Hamytz son of Hurtzast,” he cried. “Servant of Ba-tradz like my fathers before me, from generation to generation, since
first we rode the Sea of Grass. I have fought many battles, my arm has struck down many—”


“It is the voice of the god we would hear, battle priest.” Uryzmag interrupted him. “Bring forth the Sword that we may pray
to him!”


“The Sword!” other voices echoed. “Show us the Sword!”

Hamytz nodded—it was always hard, in the first ecstatic rush as the power rose in him, to remember why he was here. He took
a deep breath, and his skin pebbled in response to the energy around him. As he moved toward the rock formation below the
crag, the Sword grew heavier; he staggered as he reached the stones. There was power there, too, from the blood that had been
poured over them. With feet braced firmly, the priest reached behind his left shoulder and gripped the hilt, muscles still
mighty after four decades under arms flexing as he drew it free.


He could feel it quiver in his hand, hot and cold at once. His pent breath came out in a grunt as the weapon wheeled upward,
lightnings dancing around the circle as torchlight flashed from the blade. For a moment Hamytz savored its perfect balance.
It would cleave flesh as easily as it cut the air; it trembled, lusting to smite the foe. But Hamytz had had many years to
master the spurt of battle-fury that came when he drew that blade. It could be used, but not by him. The priest was its custodian
only. Someday, legend told, a king who was worthy to wield it would be born.



The cleft was a black wound in the flat surface of the offering stone. Hamytz swung the blade downward, inserting it with
the secret twist that would lock the blade in place, and felt the shock throughout his body as the power in the Sword was
earthed in the rock below.


For a moment he swayed, then he stepped back, staring. Surely more than torchlight blazed from that bright blade!

“Behold the Sword of War!” he cried. “God-steel, star-steel, cast flaming down from heaven to bury itself in earth’s womb.
Spell-steel, forged by Kurdalagon, master of Chalybes’ magic, sorcerer-smiths of our ancient homeland. Neither breaking nor
bending, neither rusting nor tarnished, this immortal blade we honor!”


He bowed and from a dozen throats came a wordless ululation of praise. Uryzmag stood closest, holding the goat. Once drawn,
the blade must be blooded. Usually, the sacrifice was some small animal, though there were stories that in time of great need
the Iazyges had sometimes offered it the blood of men.


The hairs lifted on Hamytz’s neck.

“Bright One, we call you—” he said hoarsely. “Behold, your weapon is waiting. Come down now and bless your sons, for the land
is troubled and we have need!”


If possible, the Sword seemed to shine even more brightly, but the god was not yet present—Hamytz had not expected it. With
an odd dancing step he began to move sunwise around the stone, directing a portion of his awareness to keep him steady on
the rocky ground. When first he served the god, he had been easily distracted, but increasingly, as he grew older, the problem
when the god-power took him was to retain contact with the ordinary world.


“Old wolf, gray wolf, I call you—” he whispered, “leader of wolves and power that binds them. Battle-craft you teach us, and
the will to wield it. Come to us, hear us, come to us now!”



Heat pulsed in his solar plexus and he gasped, fighting for control. To give way to trance was unmanly. “Great Dragon, ruler
of the skies, fly to us. Your word is justice; your roar brings victory! Come to us—” He could not: finish, but the others
took up the refrain. “You are the center,” he whispered, “the axis of the world, the linchpin of heaven—”


Hamytz had ceased to move. Unwilled, his body was stiffening, his arms rising. Panic shuddered through him—or was it desire?
The god-power had never been so strong before. But it was the Sword that must be its channel. To be possessed by this ecstasy
was the way of the kam, not the warrior.


“Batradz!” Hamytz cried, his body arching in invocation. Power answered like a bolt from heaven. To his altered sight the
Sword blazed as the god-power flared through it into the earth, and then, like lightning after thunder, the force surged back
through his feet and up his spine, blasting all resistance, bearing his spirit away.


Hamytz was not aware that he had fallen, or that the spears were continuing the rhythm as he lay twitching on the ground.
Now the crag and the stone and the men who cried out their petitions to the god were the dream. Ahead lay a radiance beyond
description, and as that light touched him, he laughed for joy. In its midst stood an armored figure. The Sword-priest fell
to his knees.


“Mighty One… ” His heart spoke. “Strengthen your people. The wild tribes are coming. Our young warriors have been taken and only old men remain to protect
their families “

“Once you were the wild tribes…” answered a voice that seemed to come from all around him. “This was their land before you came.…”

“But if not here, then where shall we find a home? Is a painted barbarian chieftain to inherit your sword?”

“Fool!” Hamytz quailed as the brightness billowed crimson. “You seek to douse your hearth when your thatch is on fire. Get you
back to the Middle World, for your enemies are upon you! Save yourself, or there will be nothing to leave!”

Power pulsed outward, and Hamytz was swept away.

He was falling, hurtling downward, whirling helplessly into the void. There was an eternity, it seemed, of fire and darkness
before the world began to make sense to him again. Sound returned first, even before sensation. There were shouts, and someone
was groaning. Hamytz tried to make out words.


“Ho, Caradawc, this one’s dead already—” The voice spoke British with the harsh accent of Alba. Hamytz was distantly aware
that someone had kicked him, but he was not yet sufficiently back into his body to feel pain.


“Search him—he might be hiding gold—”

“Not me. He’s god-struck! The dead be worse than the living, with his kind!”

From farther off came shouting and the clash of spears. Perhaps he was dead, thought Hamytz dizzily. But if he were a spirit, he should be able to see…


“I’ll take his sword, then—the one that’s standing there!”

Awareness whirled back in a sudden torrent of fear. Hamytz smelled smoke, and the sweet stink of blood, and the damp tang
of approaching rain.


“Caradawc, do not!” the first man cried. “’Tis some out-lander witchery!”

“But a fine blade—” A clap of thunder interrupted his words, followed by a burst of shouting.

“By Taranis! They rally! Come away, come away!”

Hamytz heard hoofbeats and knew that at least one of the Iazyges had made it: back to the horses. His people were no use afoot,
but they rode like centaurs. Stones scattered as the pony went by, then came a meaty thunk and a cry.


“Cynwal, Cynwal!” cried the man who had wanted the Sword, followed by a torrent of profanity as the hoofbeats approached again.
“Ye murdering scum—’tis my brother ye’ve
spitted there. But I’ll return!” he cried, “for the sword an’ his blood-price, so I will!”


The hoofbeats grew louder, but the running feet were swifter still. Struggling to come fully into his body, Hamytz heard both
fade. His dizziness increased, but his eyelids were fluttering. With a convulsive twist he found himself suddenly upright,
eyes wide. There were bodies all around him—men of the Painted People stripped for battle, their naked limbs tattooed in blue,
and his own comrades, lying like fallen dragons in their shirts of scales. Farther off he could sense a moving blur of horses,
and in the sky beyond them a lurid light that must come from the burning roofs of Bremetennacum.


It had come, then, the great breaking of the Wall that they had feared. He had seen enough burning towns in his time to judge
from the brightness of that glow how little would survive of his home. For a moment longer he stared, and felt on his brow
the first stinging drops of rain. Then his body, outraged by the violence with which his spirit had been returned to it, revolted.
Hamytz felt pain drive like a hammer through his skull, and knew no more.


“Ach, now, be you still. ’Tis a fair knock those wolves must have given you to lay such a strong man low. You’ll need rest—”

The words were in the British tongue, but the voice was light, with a lilt like birdsong, and the hands that went with it
soft as they stroked the hair back from his brow. Hamytz sighed, trying to reconcile his last, anguished, memories with the
warm darkness in which he was lying now.


“Not… a blow.…” he croaked painfully, fighting to remember the words, then coughed.

“Do you say so? But men often forget what led up to a crack on the skull,” the woman replied. “You were half-drowned and half-frozen,
anyhow, and you should be glad of the warmth of Rhiannon’s fire.”



“Rhiannon…” Hamytz struggled to open his eyes. A flicker from the hearth showed him the slope of a thatched roof and a circular,
whitewashed wall. A great many bags and bundles seemed to be hanging from the long poles that peaked above him: his nostrils
flared at the sharp scents of drying herbs. But mostly it was the sturdy shape of the woman that claimed his attention, the
firelight behind her kindling sparks of flame in the masses of her hair.


“Rhiannon merch Gutuator—” she replied, a little defiantly, and when he did not react, laughed. “You be no man of this country,
I think, not to have heard of the Druid’s daughter. Nor even a Briton, by your tongue and your gear. Be you a christened man?”


Slowly he shook his head. “I am a man of the Iazyges—I served with the Legions and came home to Bremetennacum when my time
was done.”


He heard the quick intake of her breath. “I thought perhaps you had been in the fighting, but you had crawled some ways when
I found you.”


Crawled… Dimly he remembered a storm, and slipping in the mud of the road. He had not even run away—he had crawled like a worm. The
woman’s voice seemed to come from a distance.


“The ravens were busy over the hill behind you, but I went no farther. For the dead I could do nothing—better to spend my
strength for a living man.”


“And what of the vicus?” he forced himself to ask.

Slowly she shook her head. “That was a great burning. But no refugees have come from the town. Unless the Alban wolves took
slaves, I do not think that any survived. I am sorry. Did you lose family?”


“There were none of my blood left.” He coughed, trying to ease the ache in his chest. “And none of my people now. I am alone.”


“As I am alone.…” It seemed to Hamytz he heard her whisper, but suddenly a fit of shivering took him, and he could not be
sure. In another moment he felt warm again, too warm. He tried to push his covers away.


There was a soft exclamation as she touched his brow. “The fever—I feared it! But do you drink this and you will be better—I
will not lose you too!”


A horn cup was set to his lips and Hamytz drank instinctively, grimacing as the bitter stuff went down. He found himself wondering
who else she had lost. But sleep overcame him before he could ask.


In his delirium Hamytz dreamed. He was climbing the mountain of the gods, moving as easily as a boy. A part of him knew this
was because the cord that held spirit to body had become very thin, but that no longer mattered. He sought the light like
a warrior coming home after a long campaign, eager to enjoy his rest and the fruits of victory.


But when he came to the peak, the god was sitting with his back turned. Hamytz hesitated. Finally the silence stretched beyond
his bearing.


“Lord, I have served you! I have fought long and hard, and cared for your people. Will you not welcome me?”

There was a long silence, and then a whisper so faint he could not tell if it came from the god or from the depths of his
own soul.


“You ran away. Where is the Sword with which I entrusted you?”

Anguish swept Hamytz’s spirit, sudden and devastating. It was true! He had lost control of his spirit and been unable to defend
himself. He was a warrior no longer. “In the hand of an enemy… we were taken by surprise! There was nothing I could do!”


“You lie—” came the implacable answer. “The Sword
stands still where you set it. It has not yet been defiled. But each hour it stays unguarded increases the danger. In a righteous
cause it will bring victory, but disaster if used for greed or gain. Any power may be turned to evil if misused, and mine
above all. It is not your honor only that will be lost if the Sword is taken, but the peace of the world.”


Hamytz recoiled, but the men of his line had been bred to bravery—even the courage to defy the gods. “What peace does the
world have now?” he cried. “My sons are dead in a senseless war, my people scattered. There is nothing for the Sword to guard—the
children of Batradz are no more!”


“Think you that ye are my only children?” The Voice rang out through all the worlds. “Have you no care for this land that
has nourished you, or the generations that will come after? Shall they live as wolves, or worse—for my hounds are honest beasts
that live by their own laws—shall they devour each other because a weapon of destruction has been loosed upon the world?”


“Then destroy it!” Hamytz exclaimed. “Send down a bolt of lightning to melt it to a lump once more!”

“By men it was made to carry my power; by men it must be controlled. Live, son of Hurtzast! Until you have seen the Sword
to safety, your task is not done!”


Hamytz sought for words to plead—he had done his best and he was weary—the god could not wish him to go back again! But already
the sky was darkening. Thunder boomed; the air around the god glowed livid as a dying fire. In the gloom the figure of the
god loomed suddenly monstrous. Hamytz recoiled. No human soul, however courageous, could stand before the Face he sensed the
god was wearing now. As that terrible figure began to turn, he fled once more.


“The Sword!” Hamytz’s own voice brought him back to trembling awareness. He struggled to sit, but could not resist the soft
hands that pressed him back against the sleeping furs.



“Be still now—” came a woman’s voice. Roxana? But no— the words were British, and his wife had died years ago. He blinked
and saw a face worn with lack of sleep, though good bones shaped the skin. Memory began to return. He licked dry lips, forcing
himself to think in the native tongue.


“You are… Rhiannon.”

“Indeed—” she answered, an unexpected beauty lighting her strong features as she smiled. “And who is it I have been nursing
for three nights and three days?”


“I am Hamytz son of Hurtzast… I was… a priest of our god.”

“A man of the old wisdom among the Horse People?” Her smile deepened. “Then you are doubly welcome here. My father used to
tell how our own tribes dwelt in the land of the Scyths, long and long ago. Perhaps we come of ancient kin.”


He stared at her. For six generations the Iazyges had lived among the British they protected, with them but never of them,
too concerned with maintaining their own identity to wonder what wisdom might be found in their new home. Certainly it had
never occurred to him that the British themselves might once have been newcomers here. Any kinship between them would be ancient
indeed, but he found the thought oddly comforting.


He started to tell her so, and began to cough again. But this time the stuff that had stopped his lungs came up easily, and
though the paroxysms were violent, when they ended, he breathed more freely than he had in days.


“I will bring you food now,” she said when he lay back at last. “The worst is over. Now you need strength to heal.”

Hamytz rested with eyes closed, listening to the woman as she moved about the hearth. I will get well, but for what? he wondered. I am a warrior no longer— He shivered a little, remembering, I ran away.…



He ate the food the woman brought to him, but though he was no longer in pain, he slept badly, haunted by memories.


The next morning Rhiannon helped him outside to sit in the thin autumn sunlight. It was only then that Hamytz realized how
isolated she was. The house was built in the old British style, round, with a thatched roof. It nestled in the lee of a hillside
with a view down the long valley. If he stood, he could just see the pale line of road leading north to the Wall, but there
were no other habitations in sight, and no people—only the white sheep grazing the hillside and the hawks that circled against
the pale sky.


“Have you no other family? No kin?” he asked her that evening when they sat beside the fire. Rhiannon shook her head.

“My parents came here from the Summer Country, in the South. The Christian priests would not have my father live in the town,”
she answered, “and the people were afraid to seek him openly, though they valued his knowledge of the old ways. This place
is far enough away so the Romans could ignore us, but close enough that men who needed a judgment according to the ancient
laws, or women who wanted my mother to brew up a medicine for some ill, could come. I was the only one of their children that
lived, and now they are both gone, so I, like you, am alone.”


“But you are young—you should have a man and babes of your own.”

“Not so young that I would trade my freedom for the sake of a lad’s bright smile.” Rhiannon pushed back her hair and bent
to stir the gruel. “I would perish within walls. And what need have I of such safeguards? The northerners fear my curses and
our own folk swear by my spells.”


Hamytz looked, and indeed there was a thread or two of
silver in her burnished hair. But to him she seemed little more than a child. He sighed.


“Then you have no need of any protection I might offer you. As soon as I can travel, I will be gone.”

She looked up at him swiftly, and he saw her face go first red, then pale. “What are you saying? You can hardly walk to the
door!” she cried, and then, “Did you think I wished to be rid of you?” She reached out to him, and the touch of her hand sent
a tingling through his flesh that reminded him oddly of the Sword.


“You cannot afford to keep me forever—” He tried to smile. “I have always earned my own bread. My home is gone, but in times
like these there is always work for a fighting man.”


He could see that she doubted him, but he schooled his face to give nothing away. She was right of course—he might put up
a good front, but there was no virtue left in him. He had let the trance take him; he had run away. If he survived long enough
to find a new place, the first time his strength was tested, he would fall. And the sooner the better, he thought then, but
not here, not where Rhiannon could see that her labors had been wasted.


“Is that what you will do, truly?” she asked. The dark fires of her hair hid her face as she bent to stir the pot; he could
not tell if she were mocking him. “When you raved with fever, it seemed there was some task that weighed on your mind. The Sword of God… ” she said in his own tongue. “Often you cried out those words. What do they mean?”


Hamytz stared at her. The Iazyges never spoke of their Hallows to outsiders, but there were none of his blood left to know,
and Rhiannon was of the Wisefolk of her own tribe.


“The Sword of God. My glory,” he said finally, “—and my shame. It is the sacred sword through which the power of the god whom
the Romans call Mars came down to us. I was its guardian.”



“And what became of it?”


He gestured toward the hills. “It still stands yonder, thrust into the stone where the Painted People came upon us as we called
the god.”


Rhiannon’s eyes widened. “Did they take it?”

“I do not know—” Hamytz grimaced. “My lord sent his lightnings, but I was helpless. I do not know.”

“You must reclaim it!” she exclaimed. “If it is as you say, in the wrong hands it could do great destruction. Do your people
leave the Hallows lying about to be misused by the unwise? I assure you it is not so among my own!”


Hamytz groaned, his hands coming up to cover his face as if to shut out her words. “It is true—it is true, and I have betrayed
my trust. Earth will hold the Sword for a time, and the spells upon the sheath can keep it quiet, but only deep waters could
hide it forever. It is a Chalybes blade, forged by forgotten magic in the land from which we came.”


“Calib… ” she echoed, and he was too weary to correct her. “When you are stronger”—she looked up at him—”we will fetch it
from your shrine, and if you are still unable to care for it, we will find a deep tarn in which to sink it from the sight
of men.”


“Unworthy.… ” That was the word she had been too kind to say. Or perhaps, he thought numbly, it should have been “afraid.”

As the moon of harvest drew on, Hamytz continued to mourn his lost honor. But increasingly, as time passed, his body was reasserting
its will to live. He walked farther each day and ate more, began to busy himself making small repairs about the place and
to help with the sheep. In other times he would have been too proud to serve a woman, or even to live so close to one who
was not his wife or kin. But he was not a warrior anymore. During the day, activity kept him from brooding, but he
dreaded the hours of darkness when he lay rigid, fighting sleep, or thrashed in the grip of evil dreams.


On a night when the wind whispered in the thatching and the wild geese lamented the turning of the year, Hamytz dreamed that
he was alone on a desolate moor. Wolves howled behind him, and he struggled to go more quickly. If only he had some way to
defend himself! But at the thought it seemed to him he heard laughter. “You had a weapon, but you threw it away! Son of Hurtzast, where is the Sword?”

Hamytz turned, seeking his tormentor. Something to