Doctor Who_ Battlefield - Marc Platt [3]
‘Where’s Arthur?’ yelled the voice at his ear. Bedivere knew the voice only too well and loathed it with all his heart.
‘Safe away from you, Mordred Fitzroy! King’s bastard!’
There were no more questions to ask. And nothing that Bedivere would answer. Staring up at the sky towards home. he hardly felt the sword that cut into his throat.
‘A once and future king?’ complained Merlin. ‘Dear oh dear, I thought we’d given up all that nonsense.’ He shook his head of unruly red hair in irritation. ‘Isn’t enough ever enough?’
Arthur raised himself painfully from the side of the chair where they had sat him. He slammed his gloved fist against the carved arm. ‘You gave your word!’
‘I most certainly did not! You’ve been listening to those minstrels again. They always exaggerate.’
‘Teeth of Heaven!’ A series of coughs tore up from Arthur’s aching lungs. He pushed away the queen who moved in to tend him and wiped the fresh blood from his mouth himself. ‘You are never here when I have need of you, Merlin.’
The wizard shrugged and smiled weakly, revealing the laughter lines on his avuncular face. ‘I can’t be everywhere at once.’
But there was still mischief behind his eyes. And he still looked younger every time he returned.
Arthur rested his head back on the side of the chair. He looked around the dark ribs of the King’s Hall ship that Merlin had cultured for him long, long ago in the vat-cellars of the High Tagel. The consoles bleeped quietly as they awaited his instructions. Always ready to jump the stars or outfly the swiftest ornithopter.
‘Ten years of war have we suffered. My wife and friend are lost to me. The alliance of the Round Table is broken.
My kingdom is slipping away. The land dies.’
‘Morgaine has grown in power.’
‘She will destroy us all with her black arts.’
‘I doubt that. Arthur. But it may be a long struggle.’
‘I thought I had lost my tutor too. And then you return against all odds, but only to snatch away my remaining hope.’
‘Oh, don’t be so gloomy. And never trust people who make prophesies.’
Arthur lifted his eyes in disbelief. ‘But you do naught else!’
‘It’s one of my more annoying habits.’
The High King of the Thirteen Worlds gripped the arms of the chair and struggled to rise. He cursed as his knees buckled under him. The dead armour was cumbersome and he was too weak to move against it. He sat back temporarily defeated. But he would find a way.
He missed Lancelot. And he longed to see Guenever again and ask for her forgiveness.
Merlin took a salve-sponge from one of the queens and began gently to wipe the mud and blood from the aged king’s face.
‘My dear Arthur, I think it’s time I came clean with you.’
‘Excalibur,’ he muttered. ‘Where is it?’
‘You see it’s all very well calling me tutor, but I can’t even begin your education until I find out how all this ends.’
To Merlin’s surprise, the king appeared to rally from his misery. ‘So it is true then,’ he said eagerly.
‘True? Why? What else have the minstrels been saying?’
‘That you live your life backwards.’
‘No, no, no!’
From his tatty embroidered Afghan coat, Merlin tugged a floppy hat of brown felt. He flailed it into shape as he tried to contain his annoyance. Around its brim, the saffron Katmandu bandana was creased and tangled. A pair of finger cymbals tinkled to the floor. ‘My life may be rather haphazard — in a temporal sort of way. But I cannot predict the future...’
‘You deny it yet again!’
‘Of course I do! And you know that.’
‘So you cannot say the hour of my death.’
The wizard smiled inwardly that the old king could still beat his tutor into a corner. He looked forward to beginning the young king’s education. But there seemed no way to convince his old friend that time was passing.
All things had their time and that included the time to let go of what you loved.
‘I shall rise again,’ continued Arthur. ‘There is no question. I decree it. And I shall see Morgaine defeated.
And you, Merlin, I rely on to see me win through!’
Merlin’s twin hearts