Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

We ran back into the disordered library where I rammed the big work table up against the door as a temporary barrier while Galahad kicked open the shutters on the windows facing the west. A new swarm of Franks surged through the harpist's room and Merlin snatched the wooden cross from around his neck and hurled the feeble missile at the invaders who were momentarily checked by the heavy table. As the cross fell a great burst of flame engulfed the antechamber. I thought the deadly fire was mere coincidence and that the wall to the room had collapsed to let in a furnace surge just as the cross struck, but Merlin claimed it as his own triumph. “The horrible thing had to be good for something,” he said of the cross, then cackled at the screaming, burning enemy. “Roast, you worms, roast!” He was thrusting the precious scroll into the breast of his gown. “Did you ever read Silius Italicus?” he asked me.

“Never heard of him, Lord,” I said, tugging him towards the open window.

“He wrote epic verse, my dear Derfel, epic verse.” He resisted my panicked tugging and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Let me give you some advice.” He spoke very seriously. “Shun epic verse. I speak from experience.”

I suddenly wanted to cry like a child. It was such relief to look into his wise and wicked eyes again. It was like being reunited with my own father. “I've missed you, Lord,” I blurted out.

“Don't go sentimental on me now!” Merlin snapped, then hurried to the window as a Prankish warrior burst through the flames in the doorway and slid along the table's top, screaming defiance. The man's hair was smoking as he thrust his spear towards us. I knocked his blade aside with my shield, lunged with the sword, kicked him and lunged again. “This way!” Galahad shouted from the garden beyond the window. I gave the dying Frank a last cut, then saw that Merlin had gone back to his work table. “Hurry, Lord!” I shouted to him.

“The cat!” Merlin explained. “I can't abandon the cat! Don't be absurd!”

“For the Gods' sake, Lord!” I yelled at him, but Merlin was scrabbling under the table to retrieve the frightened grey cat that he cradled in his arms as he at last scrambled over the sill into a herb garden protected by low bay hedges. The sun was splendid in the west, drenching the sky brilliant red and shivering its fiery reflection across the waters of the bay. We crossed the hedge and followed Galahad down a flight of steps that led to a gardener's hut, then on to a perilous path that ran around the breast of the granite peak. On one side of the path was a stone cliff, and on the other air, but Galahad knew these tracks from childhood and led us confidently down towards the dark water. Bodies floated in the sea. Our boat, crowded to the point where it was a miracle it could even float at all, was already a quarter-mile off the island with its oars labouring to drag its weight of passengers to safety. I cupped my hands and shouted. “Culhwch!” My voice echoed off the rock and faded across the sea where it was lost in the immensity of cries and wailing that marked Ynys Trebes's end.

“Let them go,” Merlin said calmly, then searched under the dirty robe he had worn as Father Celwin.

“Hold this.” He thrust the cat into my arms, then groped again under his robe until he found a small silver horn that he blew once. It gave a sweet note.

Almost immediately a small dark wherry appeared around Ynys Trebes's northern shore. A single robed man propelled the little boat with a long sweep that was gripped by an oarlock at the stern. The wherry had a high pointed prow and room in its belly for just three passengers. A wooden chest lay on the bottom boards, branded with Merlin's seal of the Horned God, Cernunnos. “I made these arrangements,” Merlin said airily, 'when it became apparent that poor Ban had no real idea what scrolls he possessed. I thought I would need more time, and so it proved. Of course the scrolls were labelled, but the fili were for ever mixing them up, not to say trying to improve them when they weren't stealing the verse and calling it their own. One wretch spent six months plagiarizing Catullus, then filed him under Plato. Good evening, my dear Caddwg!“ he greeted the boatman genially. ”All is well?"

“Other than the world dying, yes,” Caddwg growled in answer.

“But you've got the chest.” Merlin gestured at the sealed box. “Nothing else matters.” The elegant wherry had once been a palace boat used to ferry passengers from the harbour to the larger ships anchored offshore, and Merlin had arranged for it to wait his summons. Now we stepped aboard and sank to its deck as the dour Caddwg thrust the small craft out into the evening sea. A single spear plunged from the heights to be swallowed by the water alongside us, but otherwise our departure was unnoticed and untroubled. Merlin took the cat from me and settled contentedly in the boat's bows while Galahad and I stared back at the island's death.

Smoke poured across the water. The cries of the doomed were a wailing threnody in the dying day. We could see the dark shapes of Prankish spearmen still crossing the causeway and splashing off its end towards the fallen city. The sun sank, darkening the bay and making the flames in the palace brighter. A curtain caught the fire and flared brief and vivid before crumbling to soft ash. The library burned fiercest; scroll after scroll bursting into quick flame to make that corner of the palace into an inferno. It was King Ban's bale fire burning through the night.

Galahad wept. He knelt on the deck, clutching his spear, and watched his home turn to dust. He made the sign of the cross and said a silent prayer that willed his father's soul to whatever Other-world Ban had believed in. The sea was mercifully calm. It was coloured red and black, blood and death, a perfect mirror for the burning city where our enemy danced in ghoulish triumph. Ynys Trebes was never rebuilt in our time: the walls fell, the weeds grew, seabirds roosted there. Prankish fishermen avoided the island where so many had died. They did not call it Ynys Trebes any more, but gave it a new name in their own coarse tongue: the Mount of Death, and at night, their seamen say, when the deserted isle looms black out of an obsidian sea, the cries of women and the whimpering of children can still be heard. We landed on an empty beach on the western side of the bay. We abandoned the boat and carried Merlin's sealed chest up through whin and gale-bent thorn to the headland's high ridge. Full night fell as we reached the summit, and I turned to see Ynys Trebes glowing like a ragged ember in the dark, then I walked on to carry my burden home to Arthur's conscience. Ynys Trebes was dead. We took ship for Britain out of the same river where I had once prayed that Bel and Manawydan would see me safe home. We found Culhwch in the river, his overloaded boat grounded on the mud. Leaner was alive and so were most of our men. One ship fit to make the voyage home was left in the river, its master having waited in hope of making a fat profit from desperate survivors, but Culhwch put his sword to the man's throat and had him take us home for free. The rest of the river's people had already fled from the Franks. We waited through a night made garish by the reflected flames of Ynys Trebes's burning and in the morning we raised the ship's anchor and sailed north.

Merlin watched the shore recede and I, scarce daring to believe that the old man had really come back to us, gazed at him. He was a tall bony man, perhaps the tallest I ever knew, with long white hair that grew back from his tonsure line to be gathered in a black-ribboned pigtail. He had worn his hair loose and dishevelled when he pretended to be Celwin, but now, with the pigtail restored, he looked like the old Merlin. His skin was the colour of old, polished wood, his eyes were green and his nose a sharp bony prow. His beard and moustaches were plaited into fine cords that he liked to twist in his fingers when he was thinking. No one knew how old he was, but certainly I never met anyone older, unless it was the Druid Balise, nor did I ever know any man who seemed so ageless as Merlin. He had all his teeth, every last one, and retained a young man's agility, though he did love to pretend to be old and frail and helpless. He dressed in black, always in black, never another colour, and habitually carried a tall black staff, though now, fleeing from Armorica, he lacked that badge of office. He was a commanding man, not just because of his height, reputation or the elegance of his frame, but because of his presence. Like Arthur, he had the ability to dominate a room and to make a crowded hall seem empty when he left, but where Arthur's presence was generous and enthusiastic, Merlin's was always disturbing. When he looked at you it seemed that he could read the secret part of your heart and, worse still, find it amusing. He was mischievous, impatient, impulsive and totally, utterly wise. He belittled everything, maligned everyone and loved a few people wholly. Arthur was one, Nimue another and I, I think, was a third, though I could never really be sure for he was a man who loved pretence and disguises. “You're looking at me, Derfel!” he accused me from the boat's stern where he still had his back turned towards me.