Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

The scene that confronted me stays stuck in my mind like a memory of a mosaic picture. Seneca still stood beside the crib, frozen in consternation, his eyes and mouth wide open in anger and surprise, his hands raised in front of him, fingers pointing towards me. Caius had launched himself across the floor in a stumbling run, either to attack Seneca or to try to save the child, I do not know which. The Catamite, as I thought of him, was leaping towards Caius on an intercepting course, a dagger in his right hand, his left reaching for Cay. As I absorbed this, the two men met and the weight of the younger man took Caius over backwards, off-balance and falling. The Catamite, however, had more strength than I would have thought. His left elbow hooked around Cay's neck and held him up until they crashed together against the wall. Before I could react the Catamite had Caius pinned firmly in front of him, his back arched against the pressure of the stranglehold, the point of the dagger pressing into Caius's neck below the ear.

I hesitated and lost the initiative. I heard the slither of Seneca's sword come hissing from its sheath and his voice filled the room: "Kill the old man! This is the one we want!" And then Caius gave me back the initiative. He brought up his knees and let his whole weight jerk his captor forward, away from the wall. As the Catamite stumbled towards me off balance, I went for him, swinging my new sword high and bringing it down like an axe across his back. It caught him across the shoulders, slicing clean through the leather cuirass that he wore, but it lodged there, caught in the toughened armour for the space of two heartbeats.

I saw a flash of whiteness and jerked the blade free, whirling towards the movement. Seneca was snatching the baby from its crib, holding it by its bunched swaddling clothes, and Enid, beautiful, naked Enid, was throwing herself on him. Their bodies came together and my insides screamed as I saw the blade in his hand strike upwards. She convulsed, her whole body seeming to hunch around the point of impact, and then he pushed her away violently and stood there wild-eyed, like a demon straight from Hades, the blood-stained blade in one hand and the screaming child, soaked with its mother's blood, in the other. Enid fell heavily on her back, her arms across her bloodied belly, her legs scissoring convulsively. Nearby, almost unnoticed by me, the Catamite began to crawl away from the huddled shape that was Caius.

"Stand away!" Seneca's eyes were glaring with that same sickening, empty intensity I remembered. "Back! Stand back or the brat dies now."

"If the baby dies now, you will take months to die, Seneca, I swear to you on his mother's blood."

"Then save him! Save the little bastard!" He hoisted the child high in the air above his head so that it dangled, red-faced and screaming. His other hand, raised high beside it, pressed the bloody blade to the child's gut.

"Save him, Varrus, you son of a raddled whore! Throw that thing down. That sword. Now. Over here, by me. Throw it!" He was screaming at the top of his voice and I was terrified that he would kill the child in spite of everything.

I had no choice. I looked at Enid's body, now grown still and odd-looking in the strangeness of death. I looked at Caius and saw blood bubbling slowly from his neck, around the hilt of the Catamite's blade. The Catamite himself was about two paces behind me, crawling painfully, scrabbling at the marble-tiled floor. I thought of all the blood and all the carnage and the misery and pain that had spilled down from that one day so many years ago, and my anger and grief overwhelmed me. My dear friend Phoebe had died for that, and now Enid, and Caius. All the innocents. I turned my back on Seneca and raised my new sword high. The skystone dagger fell at my feet as I grasped the cross-hilt in both hands and drove the point downward, like a spear, between the Catamite's shoulders and into his evil heart.

"Varrus!" The voice was an insane scream. "I gave you an order! Didn't you hear me? I gave you an order!"

I turned my head slowly, incredulous, to look at him, and at the sight of him I closed my eyes.

"That thing! That sword! I want it over here. Now!"

I gripped the hilt firmly and began to work it slowly back and forth, loosening it until I could pull it from the corpse, and then I flung it to him, beyond caring any more. The baby had to live. If I gave in to him, surely not even as demented a thing as he could kill a baby... ? The sword clanged loudly on the marble floor and slid to his feet. Still holding the infant high, he stretched with one foot and kicked it away from him, behind him.

"Now down! On your knees, you crippled pig!" I felt every one of my fifty-seven years, and I felt my spirit give way inside me. A small, surprised and clear-toned voice inside my head was saying that I had never seen so much blood in one room before. It was everywhere, and none of it was mine, and none of it was Seneca's, but it was everyone else's. Even the baby was bleeding now, where Seneca had nicked his tiny cheek with his blade. I could see Cay's blood, and Enid's blood, and the Catamite's blood, and the blood of the other men I had killed. Soon now, I knew, I would see my own blood, too, for I had lost the will to fight any more. I wanted it to be over. My eyes blurred with tears and I sobbed aloud, not caring I was beaten, for I knew he would kill the child. I fell to my knees. I had lost track of time and place and reason. I saw only blood and I wanted an end to it. And then I saw Seneca straighten up even more and step back a pace.

"Get away!" he screamed. "Back, or I kill the brat!" Bemused, I looked around me and saw Plautus framed in the doorway behind me, and my own sanity returned in a rush. I put one hand on the bloody floor and pushed myself to my feet.

Plautus still held the long-sword in his right hand. His left was clutched around the hilt of a gladium that protruded from his chest. His face was deathly pale and his eyes seemed to burn in their sunken sockets. He walked like a drunken man, one slow, staggering step at a time. There was death in his face — death for Claudius Seneca. Seneca side-stepped, moving crabwise away from him, screaming again that he would kill the child.

Plautus swayed to a halt. "Go ahead," he said, in a clear, small voice. "It's not mine. I don't care. All I care about is killing you, you stinking vomit."

I saw my skystone dagger lying on the floor at my feet; I saw Plautus take another lurching step; and then I saw Caius move, just as Plautus fell to his knees, blood gouting from his mouth.

Seneca, unbelievably, began to laugh, a high-pitched, gibbering giggle that chilled me. He took two more sideways steps away from Plautus, still holding the baby and his own blade high above his head, and then he shook them both, blade and baby, staring at Plautus, who was trying to regain his feet. At this point, Seneca's own right heel came to rest in the angle of the cross-guard of Excalibur. He glanced quickly down, saw what it was, and kicked it away from him again. It slid across the marble floor, this time to stop in front of the open eyes of Caius Britannicus.

Somehow, incredibly, Plautus staggered erect again and took another stumbling, implacable step towards Seneca. As he did so I stooped and snatched up my dagger. Seneca whimpered like a child, took another skipping step backwards and then rose to his tiptoes, stretching high in the air, his eyes darting from one to the other of us as Caius Britannicus somehow swung Excalibur from where he lay, flat on the floor. The edge of the shining blade sliced into the back of Seneca's bare knees, cutting the stretched tendons, dropping him immediately and flopping him backwards so that his shoulders hit the floor. The baby Merlyn landed on his dying grandfather. Seneca screamed like a woman, squirming frantically, trying to get up, but crippled far worse than I had ever been. The baby's screams were tiny, lost in his.