Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

“Over here!” Galahad called, pointing to a narrow path. “Follow the path to our boat!” Our men ran for their lives. “Come on, Derfel!” he called to me.

But I did not move. I was staring up the steep hill.

“Come on, Derfel!” Galahad insisted.

But I was hearing a voice in my head. It was an old man's voice; a dry, sardonic and unfriendly voice, and the sound of it would not let me move.

“Come on, Derfel!” Galahad screamed.

“I put my life in your hands,” the old man had said, and suddenly he spoke again inside my skull. “I lay my life on your conscience, Derfel of Dumnonia.”

“How do I reach the palace?” I called to Galahad.

“Palace?”

“How!” I shouted angrily.

“This way,” he said, 'this way!"

We climbed.

The Bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.

I have been fortunate in friends. Arthur was one, but of all my friends there was never another like Galahad. There were times when we understood each other without speaking and others when words tumbled out for hours. We shared everything except women. I cannot count the number of times we stood shoulder to shoulder in the shield-wall or the number of times we divided our last morsel of food. Men took us for brothers and we thought of ourselves in the same way. And on that broken evening, as the city smouldered into fire beneath us, Galahad understood I could not be taken to the waiting boat. He knew I was in the hold of some imperative, some message from the Gods that made me climb desperately towards the serene palace crowning Ynys Trebes. All around us horror flooded up the hill, but we stayed ahead of it, running desperately across a church roof, jumping down to an alley where we pushed through a crowd of fugitives who believed the church would give them sanctuary, then up a flight of stone steps and so to the main street that circled Ynys Trebes. There were Franks running towards us, competing to be the first into Ban's palace, but we were ahead of them along with a pitiful handful of people who had escaped the slaughter in the lower town and were now seeking a hopeless refuge in the hilltop dwelling.

The guards were gone from the courtyard. The palace doors lay open and inside, where women cowered and children cried, the beautiful furniture waited for the conquerors. The curtains stirred in the wind.

I plunged into the elegant rooms, ran through the mirrored chamber and past Leanor's abandoned harp and so to the great room where Ban had first received me. The King was still there, still in his toga, and still at his table with a quill in his hand. “It's too late,” he said as I burst into the room with sword drawn.

“Arthur failed me.”

Screams sounded in the palace corridors. The view from the arched windows was smeared by smoke.

“Come with us, Father!” Galahad said.

“I have work to do,” Ban said querulously. He dipped his quill into the inkhorn and began to write. “Can't you see I'm busy?”

I pushed through the door which led to the library, crossed the empty antechamber, then thrust open the library door to see the hunchbacked priest standing at one of the scroll shelves. The polished wooden floor was littered with manuscripts. “Your life is mine,” I shouted angrily, resenting that such an ugly old man had put me to this obligation when there were so many other lives to save in the city, 'so come with me! Now!" The priest ignored me. He was frantically pulling scrolls from the shelves, tearing off their ribbons and seals and scanning the first lines before throwing them down and snatching other scrolls.

“Come on!” I snarled at him.

“Wait!” Celwin insisted, pulling down another scroll, then discarded it and ripped another open. “Not yet!”

A crash sounded in the palace; a cheer resounded and was drowned in screams. Galahad was standing in the library's outer door, pleading with his father to come with us, but Ban just waved his son away as though his words were a nuisance. Then the door burst open and three sweating Prankish warriors rushed in. Galahad ran to meet them, but he had no time to save his father's life and Ban did not even try to defend himself. The leading Frank hacked at him with a sword and I think the King of Benoic was already dead of a broken heart before the enemy's blade ever touched him. The Frank tried to cut off the King's head, and that man died on Galahad's spear while I lunged at the second man with Hywelbane and swung his wounded body around to obstruct the third. The dying Frank's breath reeked of ale like the breath of Saxons. Smoke showed outside the door. Galahad was beside me now, his spear slashing forward to kill the third man, but more Franks were pounding down the corridor outside. I pulled my sword free and backed into the antechamber. “Come on, you old fool!” I screamed over my shoulder at the obstinate priest.

“Old, yes, Derfel, but a fool? Never.” The priest laughed, and something about that sour laughter made me turn and I saw, as though in a dream, that the hunched back was disappearing as the priest stretched his long body to its full height. He was not ugly at all, I thought, but wonderful and majestic and so full of wisdom that even though I was in a place of death that reeked of blood and echoed with the shrieks of the dying I felt safer than I had ever felt in all my life. He was still laughing at me, delighted at having deceived me for so long.

“Merlin!” I said, and I confess there were tears at my eyes.

“Give me a few minutes,” he said, 'hold them off.“ He was still plucking down scrolls, tearing at their seals and dropping them after a cursory glance. He had taken off the eyepatch, which had merely been a part of his disguise. ”Hold them off,“ he said again, moving to a new rack of unexamined scrolls. ”I hear you're good at slaughter, so be very good at it now."

Galahad put the harp and the harpist's stool into the outer doorway, then the two of us defended the passage with spear, sword and shields. “Did you know he was here?” I asked Galahad.

“Who?” Galahad rammed his spear into a round Prankish shield and jerked it back.

“Merlin.”

“He is?” Galahad was astonished. “Of course I didn't know.” A screaming Frank with ringlet ted hair and blood on his beard rammed a spear at me. I gripped it just below the head and used it to tug him on to my sword. Another spear was thrown past me and buried its steel head in the lintel behind. A man tangled his feet in the cacophonous harp strings and stumbled forward to be kicked in the face by Galahad. I chopped the edge of my shield on to the back of the man's neck, then parried a sword cut. The palace rang with screams and was filling with an acrid smoke, but the men attacking us were losing interest in any plunder they might discover in the library, preferring easier pickings elsewhere in the hilltop building.

“Merlin's here?” Galahad asked me in disbelief.

“Look for yourself.”

Galahad turned to stare at the tall figure who was so desperately searching among Ban's doomed library.

“That's Merlin?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know he was here?”

“I didn't,” I said. “Come on, you bastard!” This was to a big Frank, leather-cloaked and carrying a double-headed war axe, who wanted to prove himself a hero. He chanted his war hymn as he charged and was still chanting as he died. The axe buried itself in the floorboards by Galahad's feet as he pulled his spear from the man's chest.

“I have it! I have it!” Merlin suddenly shouted behind us. “Silius Italicus, of course! He never wrote eighteen books on the Second Punic War, only seventeen. How can I have been so stupid? You're right, Derfel, I am an old fool! A dangerous fool! Eighteen books on the Second Turgid War? The merest child knows there were only ever seventeen! I have it! Come on, Derfel, don't waste my time! We can't loiter here all night!”