Bernard Cornwell – Warlord 1 – Winter King

“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!”

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.