Summer vs. Winter: The Battle
The man in the gilded armor danced in and out of the men, weaving a terrifying tapestry of bloodshed and human destruction. He was a most fearsome predator this day. His ballet of butchery was fast becoming his defining moment, the glorious apex of an otherwise inglorious life.
He had run from them at Devon. He had fled Logres like a thief in the night. He had been forced to use the back tunnels when Cantiaci was sacked— tunnels that had been dug for the escape of old women and children.
“Arthur!” He spat the word, a poison from his lips. “The cause of all that is ill with me.” He swung his axe to the left and down, neatly liberating a helmed knight from his head. He smiled with glee as he bent to lift the visor to see who it was he had just done the favor of ending their service to that tyrant Arthur. What treasure to be found? Cai? Bedwyr?
A foot kicked into his side, interrupting him and spilling him over the dead knight and onto his side. “Bastard!” There was a whistling noise as a dulled and stained sword cut through the space of air a moment after his head had occupied it.
Mordred laughed sardonically at the clumsiness of the knight. He knew that the exhausted warrior had just killed himself with his missed attack. “Fool,” Mordred said as he sprung cat-like from the ground, axe already in motion. “Tell me, Bors, was it worth it?” Mordred’s axe buried itself to the shaft into the knight’s side. “Well, Sir Bors, was it?”
The knight drew upon his last reserve of strength, wrenching the axe from his side, a great gout of blood spraying forth. As the battle faded from him, he spat into his murderer’s face. And laughed.
Mordred’s smile vanished as quickly as Bors’ life was now vanishing. He wiped the spittle from his eye. In a motion that was almost supernaturally fast, he rose the axe above his head like a cobra and struck down with all of his might, cleaving the dying knight’s head down the center. He leaned to see the final look of despair on the knight’s face as he fell. Instead, Mordred saw a stanch smile, and then a single word form on the dead man’s blood-flecked lips. “Arthur.”
“Cymmerie!” The battle cry ripped through the clearing, causing all who were dying there that day to pause and look up in wonder. Mordred’s head snapped around as if on a tether line to look behind him at this new intrusion on his death sport.
Into the far end of the clearing strode the great man himself—Arthur, Ard Righ of Briton, King of the Summerlands—as a ray of sunlight penetrating through the overcast field. Arthur was a man gone berserk, swinging his sword with none able or even willing to stand against him.
Mordred smiled as he stood, but a part of his mind knew he was looking at his own death. Oh yes, he thought, there will be death here today. His and mine. He smiled again as he strode to the center of the rough clearing.
“Father,” Mordred called to Arthur in challenge. “I’m here, Father. Look no farther.”
Arthur stopped at the far end of the clearing. Something in his head clicked as he heard the voice of the bastard Mordred. “You most of all are not my son, Mordred. You’re no one’s son.”
Mordred visibly tensed at this public denial of royal paternity—of human paternity.
There was an audible intake of breath as the remaining knights from both sides of the battle took advantage of this exchange to rest for a moment.
Mordred’s life had been spared years ago, at the slaughter perpetrated on Caerleon by his alliance with the Saecson warlord Waelfwulf. Mordred had had the tenacity to presume the ancient claim of naud upon the High King just as Arthur had been about to condemn Mordred for his treasonous atrocities. A challenge to the very heart of Sovereignty itself, naud presumed that nothing was greater than Sovereignty, which was essentially held in trust by the High King for the people themselves, so the accused was literally asking for clemency and sanctuary through the king directly to the soul of the people.
If Arthur had been foolish enough to deny Mordred’s claim of naud, much as it tore his heart to do it, he would have denied the very sovereignty that placed him in the kingship in the first place. This grievous repudiation would to all intents and purposes place the crime above sovereignty, implying that the crime was greater than sovereignty in that it could not be forgiven.
A king never turned down the claim of naud, if he knew what was good for both himself and the people over which he governed. Arthur had to let Mordred live, to banish him as opposed to executing him.
The knights on the field knew this, as they knew of Mordred’s struggle to be recognized both by the Holy Mother Church and by Arthur for who he was, for who he claimed to be: the heir to the high throne of Briton.
This proclamation by Arthur—this public denouncement—was tantamount to signing Mordred’s death warrant, if the very acts of carnage that had been precipitated by him over the years had not done so already.
This would be the final battle, then. From this field would be born the future—in the resplendent form of the promised Kingdom of Summer, or in the sullied specter born from the eternal darkness of winter. The die had been cast, and it was now double or nothing for both men.
With a visible effort of his warped will, Mordred stuffed the insult into a dark corner within his heart. He smiled. “Father.” He stepped slowly but definitively towards the King. “Artos Rex.” From Mordred’s tongue the propriety of the title was as a poison and a curse to those ears still attached properly to listen.
Arthur strode confidently to the center of the field, halving the distance with each stride. He was a righteous man in a righteous battle. “The words drip like poison from your mouth, my—son.”
It was an obvious effort to mock, but Mordred, whose ears were not as keen as his tongue for sarcasm, stopped. He opened his arms in sign of parley, stopping about a third of the way across the field. “Father. I would talk with you before this goes any further.”
He took another step forward, arms extended out; hands open, showing no weapon in evidence. He lost his footing in the gore, slipping forward awkwardly but managing to catch himself before he could fall headlong into the remains of the fallen knights—the fallen Cymbrogi.
Arthur’s eyes glazed as he saw Mordred slip on the blood and gore of his friends, despoiling their remains further. His sight clouded over, the blood rushing to his head so quickly it became a screaming staccato of wind whipping through a narrow chasm in the deep folds of his mind; a chasm from where no reason escaped, from where no logic was pursued, from where the battle lust grew and rose to a fevered berserker pitch.
“Cymmerie!” Arthur heard the war cry as if from miles away now, as if it were being screamed by Bors, or Cai, or Bedwyr. He found himself racing across the field, hair and sweat flying out behind him like his own Pendragon pinion flapping in the breeze.
He was exhilarated to be in the fight—this fight—the fight. Butchers butchered, priests preached, farmers farmed. Fighters fought. Fighters fought. Fighters fought. “Cymmerie!”
Mordred backpedaled to the body of the recently killed Bors and wrenched his war axe from the cleaved knight. A smile laced his lips as he raised the axe high to meet the charging Arthur’s challenge.
Fighters fight, Mordred thought ironically, picking up his own pace so as to meet the flying king headlong.
The two fighters converged at the center of the field in a great clash of arms and armor. Caladfwlch of the Hard Lightning crashed down upon Mordred in a blow designed to split the man from skull to crotch. Mordred’s axe parried the thrust efficiently, throwing the mighty sword up and to his left, allowing him to counter with his right hand, a gauntleted fist into Arthur’s relatively unprotected gut.
Mordred’s eyes flicked jealously to Caladfwlch. Soon it will be mine, he thought, even as the great sword knocked him off balance to his left.
Swimming back through the fog of his own shortened breath, Arthur saw Mordred teeter on the edge of balance from the last hit of Caladfwlch. He completed his antagonist’s fall with a slap to the side of the head from his thickly padded hand. It was effective, knocking Mordred into the mud and gore. His helmet, haughty and defiant with its gilded wings and polished golden sheen, struck the ground and rolled to the side, denting and bending the arrogant wings into unrecognizable form
Mordred hit the ground and rolled automatically to his left, avoiding the downward arc of the sword. Caladfwlch bit into the mud. Using the sword for leverage, Mordred pulled himself up and charged Arthur with a head butt. The butting found its target, pushing Arthur back, allowing him the briefest of moments to collect himself.
The two stood for a moment, dazed. They eyed one another like two leopards, battle-scarred and unbeaten, fighting over the fresh kill of an entire kingdom, an entire future. The wind was picking up, sweeping the field clear of its lingering mist. The smell of blood was everywhere, an overwhelming coppery stench, permeating everything. Arthur and Mordred surveyed the field clearly for the first time.
“Does it do you proud, Mordred, to see the handiwork of Lucifer himself?”
Mordred smiled. “Lucifer was the Angel of Light, Father.”
“Your soul is gone then,” Arthur said more out of resolve than decision. He felt a weariness growing in his soul like a wet blanket, smothering his will.
“Spare me your platitudes. You are just as responsible for this as I am!” Mordred smiled again; a surprisingly innocent smile. “Oh, you and the Whore Mother Church. Mustn’t forget about the Holy Mother Church.” Mordred’s smile became a sneer.
Arthur bristled at the insult to Christ’s Holy Church, but did not otherwise react. “You’re under arrest.” Arthur suddenly thundered, stepping a step closer, a light glowing in his eyes. “You’ve been found guilty of crimes to the kingdom too numerous to list.” Caladfwlch raised itself high, a gavel of infallible judgment—judge, jury, and executioner.
Mordred backed away slightly, giving ground reluctantly before the enraged king, the humor gone from his eyes.
“You’ve been found guilty of murder.” Arthur spat, literally. “You’re in violation of your banishment; therefore, the sentence is death, to be carried out immediately.”
The glow in his eyes became a raging, righteous fire as it struck out at Mordred like a lightening bolt from a clear blue sky. Like the very finger of God. Mordred ducked under the first onslaught of the great sword, bringing his axe to bear against the inspired Arthur.
“You’re the murderer, Father,” he screamed, his voice high-pitched and reedy, almost feminine in its outrage. “You have killed me, you have killed my mother, you have killed everyone!” His eyes danced almost sightlessly in his head, rolling left to right and up and down. His madness was almost complete. “You have killed us all!”
And the laughter began, spilling up from some secret and perverse place in Mordred’s soul. It spilled up and outward at a phenomenal rate; it spilled up and vomited itself out over the field, spilling up and splashing across Arthur’s face, catching him off guard.
Mordred’s eyes snapped-to even as Arthur paused over the mirth that was being exuded from this killer of innocents. Madness was replaced by sanity as quickly as the sunlight displaces a shadow. Mordred stepped back with his newfound sanity and threw the battleaxe as hard as he could. The axe swung in a perfect arc towards Arthur, spinning end over end towards the king.
Arthur had a split second in which to die or to duck.
The gilded battleaxe flew through the air, missing Arthur’s head by inches as it thunked harmlessly into a tree. Mordred was on his knees from the effort of the throw, in exhaustion and mock supplication.
To an observer off the field of battle, it would have almost looked as if the kneeling man could actually be yielding. He appeared thoroughly beaten, his helm lay in a dented heap, its golden wings, once riveted proudly to the sides, were now bent at odd angles almost beyond recognition.
Sweat streamed down his face, mixing with rivulets of blood from the wide assortment of cuts and scratches on his high forehead and long face.
But Arthur knew—Arthur was wary of this young man kneeling before him—this bastard son of his who had instigated the battle that had just taken many of his fine knights out of this life; this bastard man who had supped in Arthur’s very court with the men he had just slaughtered. This man who was called Brother.
Memories of dead cymbrogi—companions of the heart—clouded Arthur’s vision and his reason once again. “The day is mine!” he heard his own voice cry from very far away in triumph, as if from another world and another time.
The late afternoon sunlight glinted off of his long, elaborately crafted sword as it was raised high in the air for one final swing. “Cymmerie!” His battle cry rose as the mighty Caladfwlch began the completion of its devastating arc, a testament to the good men who had perished this day. A memorial to be carved in blood.
A large black raven, perched on a low branch in stark relief against the pallid bark of an ancient beech tree, spread its massive wings and opened its mouth in a silent croak in anticipation of the climax.
Arthur startled inside, his steeled battle nerves beginning to unravel around the edges as the fight reached its climax.
“Father?” the kneeling man shouted. “Father? Would you slay your only son?” The man’s eyes pleaded with a practiced skill. “Your only heir?”
Heir? Gwen had been barren. There was no heir, least not this bastard. Better the throne fall empty than to have this usurper besmirch everything that they had worked so very hard to achieve. The Kingdom of Summer, it had almost been here. They had almost had it. Almost.
With an enormous effort of will, Arthur managed to pause the blade a third of the way through its stroke, sweat and tears running freely across his face.
What good would this death bring? Could it bring back Cai? Or Bors? Or Bedwyr? The tears stung the cuts on his face as the memories caused him a great, heart-wrenching distress. The Kingdom of Summer was dead. It had died this day on this killing field. They had failed—he had failed. His body wracked with spasm as the full weight of the day settled onto his shoulders.
Mordred reached behind his head, and in one swift motion withdrew a concealed bone-handled knife and plunged it deeply into the other man’s midsection.
The raven screeched indignantly and launched itself from its perch. Arthur saw the bird take flight out of the periphery of his clouding vision, a metaphorical verification of the wickedness of the day. In the split second that it took for his knees to buckle out from under him, he heard the abrasive cry of the departing bird.
A final reserve of strength was triggered from deep within Arthur as the raucous sound echoed across the dimming recesses of his mind, morphing into another’s voice.
“Mine, Father—not yours. The day is mine! The kingdom is m—”
The last words never came. The sword—the fabled, indefensible Caladfwlch—completed its arc—completed the danse macabre between father and son, summer and winter, day and night. The great sword struck seemingly with a will of its own, neatly lopping the kneeling man’s head from his shoulders.
“MMMMMmmmmmoooooorrrrrrrdddddrrrrreeeeeeedddddd!” Arthur heard the cry, though his senses had begun falling into the shadows of the endless night. Through those fading senses he saw a darker shadow dart out from the densely packed trees, slipping and sliding on the blood and gore of his friends—the shattered remains of the Knights of the Kingdom of Summer—despoiling them further.
Arthur plucked the knife out of himself with an agonizing wrench and dropped it from his dying fingers into the muck, even as his vision and hearing dimmed into nothingness.
© Ray Cattie
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