Ben Bova - Orion and King Arthur

The beast ignored the kneeling Beowulf and bellowed at me, dropping to all fours as it moved to protect its horde. But it moved slowly, as if in a dream. I dashed to the pile of weapons and pulled out the first sword I could reach.

Barely in time. The monster was almost on top of me. I slashed at its slavering jaws and it howled in pain and fury. I feinted sideways, then stepped back—and tripped on a helmet lying at my feet.

Off balance, I staggered backward. The beast swung at me; I could see those razor-sharp claws coming but there was nothing I could do to stop them. The blow knocked me onto my back. The monster’s jaws reached for me, teeth like a row of swords. I clutched my own sword in both hands and rammed it upward into the beast’s open mouth, but it did no good. Its teeth closed around me. I was going to be crushed to death, just as I had been all those long eons ago.

But the monster suddenly howled and dropped me. It turned to face Beowulf, bleeding, battered, but hacking at the beast’s flank with the fury of a berserker.

As the brute turned away from me, I scrambled to my feet and thrust my sword into its neck, angling it upward to find the brain or spine.

It collapsed so suddenly that it nearly smothered Beowulf. For long moments we both stood on tottering legs, gasping for breath, spattered with our own blood and the monster’s, staring down at its enormous carcass.

Then Beowulf looked up and grinned at me. “Help me take off its head,” he said.

4

It was pearly pink dawn when we staggered out of the cave. Beowulf carried the monster’s gigantic shaggy head on his shoulder as lightly as if it were a bit of gossamer.

We blinked at the morning light. Icy waves lapped at our ankles.

Beowulf turned to me, his cocky grin gone. “Orion, I told Hrothgar before all his thanes that I would kill the monster myself, with no one’s help.”

I nodded, but said nothing.

Suddenly his broad, strong face took on the expression of a guilty little boy’s. “Will you go on ahead and say that you searched for me, but could not find me? Then I can come later with the beast’s head.”

I glanced down at my bloody arms. “And my wounds?”

“Say you were set upon by wolves as you searched in the night for me.”

I smiled at his stupid pride, but said, “Yes, I will do it.”

“Good,” Beowulf said. He dropped the monster’s head and sat on a rock. “I will rest here for a while. I could use a little sleep.”

So it was that I returned to Hrothgar’s fortress and told the king that I had searched for Beowulf to no avail. All that long morning and well past noon we waited in growing gloom. Unferth said confidently that the monster had killed Beowulf.

He was considerably disheartened when the hero of the Geats finally arrived—with the monster’s shaggy head on his wounded shoulder.

That night the feasting at Heorot was without stint. The torches flamed, the mead flowed, the thanes sang praises of Beowulf, and the women vied for his merest glance. Hrothgar’s bard began to compose a saga. The king promised the British captives that they would be ransomed and returned to their dank, dreary island.

Only Unferth seemed unhappy, slinking in the shadows and glaring at me.

Queen Wealhtheow sat on her throne, smiling graciously at the uproarious celebration. Long past midnight, the king and queen left the mead-hall. Warriors and even churls paired off with women and strolled off into the darkness.

At last timbered Heorot fell silent. The torches were extinguished. The hearth fire burned low. I was left alone, so I stretched out on the earthen floor next to the fading embers and willed myself to sleep.

I dreamed, yet it was not a dream. I was standing in another place, perhaps a different universe altogether. There was no ground, no sky, only a silver glow like moonlight that pervaded everything. Wealhtheow stood before me, but now she wore a formfitting outfit of glittering silver metal. Anya, the warrior goddess, she was. In another time, a distant place, she was worshipped as Athena.

“You did well, Orion,” she said in a low silken voice.

“Thank you.”

“Your wounds?”

“They are already healing,” I said.

“Yes, accelerated self-repair was built into you.”

I wanted to reach out and take her in my arms, but I could not.

Instead, I asked, “Can we be together now?”

In the deepest recess of my memory I recalled a time, a lovely woodland filled with tame, graceful animals that we called Paradise, when we were together and happy. The other Creators, especially the jealous Aten, had torn her away from me.

“Not yet, my love,” she said, with a sadness in her eyes that matched my own despair. “Not yet.”

“At least, can I know why I was sent to Heorot? Why was it important to slay those beasts?”

“To save the British captives, of course.”

That surprised me. “The captives? Those pimply-faced youngsters and that emaciated old man?”

She smiled knowingly. “One of those pimply-faced youngsters is the son of a Roman who stayed behind after the legions left Britain. His name is Artorius.”

I shrugged. It made no sense to me.

“He will be important one day. A light against the darkness.” She reached out her hand to me. “The sword you found in the cave. Please give it to me.”

Puzzled, I detached the scabbarded sword from my belt and handed it to her. She slowly drew out the blade, examined the inscription on it, and smiled.

“Yes,” she said in a whisper, “he will need this later on.”

I read the one word inscribed on the matchless steel blade.

Excalibur.

1

“A Sarmatian, you say?” Sir Bors looked me up and down, sour disbelief plain on his scarred, bearded face. “And what is your name?”

“Orion,” I replied. It was the one thing I was certain of. How I came to this time and place I knew not.

“And why are you here?” asked Sir Bors.

We were standing in the dingy courtyard of a hilltop fort named Amesbury, its walls nothing more than a rickety palisade of timber staves. These Britons had tried to build their forts in the way the Roman legions had, but their engineering skills were poor. They stared at the ruins of Roman aqueducts and monuments and thought that the stonework had been done by giants or magicians.

A few dozen men milled about the bare dirt courtyard, some leading horses, a few practicing swordplay with one another. The place smelled of dung and sweat. And fear.

“I came to serve King Arthur against the Saxons,” I said.

Bors’ eyes widened. “ King Arthur? You’ve made him your king, have you?”

I felt confused. “I thought—”

Bors planted both fists on his hips and pushed his scarred face so close to mine that I could smell the stale wine on his breath.

“Ambrosius is our king, Sarmatian! Young Arthur may be his nephew, but the pup’s still wet behind the ears. King indeed!”

I said nothing.

Bors grumbled, “His uncle’s put him in charge of Amesbury fort here and sent Merlin to watch over him, but that doesn’t make him anything more than an inexperienced babe in the woods.”

“I … I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I meant to say King Ambrosius.”

Bors snorted with disdain.

My mind was spinning. I remembered Artorius as a skinny, pimply-faced boy, a captive of the Danes when I served Beowulf. I had saved him then, I dimly recalled.

Somewhere in my mind I knew he was to be king of the Britons, and he would lead these island people against the invading barbarians. Britain had been abandoned by the Roman Empire after centuries of their occupation. The legions had returned to Rome to fight against the hordes of Goths who were slashing into the empire’s heartland. Britain was left to fend for itself, wide open to invasion by the barbarian Angles and Saxons.