By Force Alone Read online

  By FORCE

  ALONE

  By FORCE

  ALONE

  LAVIE TIDHAR

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Lavie Tidhar, 2020

  The moral right of Lavie Tidhar to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Cover Designer - David Wardle

  Author Photo -Kevin Nixon (c) Future Publishing

  ISBN (HB): 9781838931278

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781838931285

  ISBN (E): 9781838931308

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  ‘From this amphibious ill-born mob began

  That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman.’

  —Daniel Defoe, The True-Born Englishman (1701)

  ‘Britain has kings but they are tyrants. They plunder and terrorise the innocent, they defend and protect the guilty and thieving. They sit with murderous men.’

  —Gildas, On the Ruin of Britain (c. 510-530 AD)

  ‘Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.’

  —Aristophanes of Athens (431 BC)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  PART ONE: THE RISE AND FALL OF UTHER PENDRAGON

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  PART TWO: LORDS OF LONDINIUM

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  PART THREE: THE COUNCIL OF SIX

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  PART FOUR: THE SUMMER COUNTRY

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  PART FIVE: THE LADY IN THE LAKE

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  PART SIX: THE CHOIR OF ANGELS

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  PART SEVEN: KNIGHT-ERRANT

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  PART EIGHT: TURNING UP BODIES

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  PART NINE: THE WEDDING

  Chapter 56

  PART TEN: THE GOLDEN AGE

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  PART ELEVEN: THE GRAIL

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  PART TWELVE: MORDRED

  Chapter 67

  PART THIRTEEN: THE LAST BATTLE

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  PART FOURTEEN: THE DEATH OF ARTHUR

  Chapter 71

  Afterword

  About the author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  PART ONE

  THE RISE AND FALL OF UTHER PENDRAGON

  1

  King Vortigern the usurper sits upon his throne and waits for the end of the world. Outside the castle walls the invaders slaughter his men and are slaughtered in turn, and the air fills with the stench of blood and the cries of the dying. King Vortigern, the usurper, is no longer a young man, and the joints of his fingers are inflamed with arthritis, but by damn he can still hold a sword.

  He sits upon his throne. It is his by right. He had schemed for it and he had killed for it and it is his by force alone. The throne is carved of old cedar brought long ago from across the sea. It had been decorated in the past with intricate inlays of Welsh gold and set with amethyst, but the usurper had ripped those and many other valuables when he took the castle and now his throne is bare.

  He prefers it that way.

  In the old days, travelling through the deep, dark forests of the land, preying on travellers or hiring out, they had slept in burrows in the earth, by burning fires, and sat on fallen trunks and logs. Sometimes he misses them, those who were there, those who had gone. Many had taken the fairy roads and were vanished, erased, but he remained, and he was hungry, and strong, and now the throne is his by right, by force alone.

  The last vestiges of battle can be heard. Sunlight drapes across the room. The king hears the gates fall and the invaders storm into his sanctum. He hears the clash of steel on steel. The throne smells pleasantly of cedar.

  After a time, there is silence. King Vortigern, the usurper, hears the tread of heavy footsteps outside his door. They come closer, unhurried, and the doors of the throne room are thrown open. First through the doors comes the tossed corpse of his son, hurled like a rag doll onto the floor. Half of his son’s face is gone and his left leg below the knee, and his sword arm hangs crooked and bent backwards, broken in several places like kindling for the fire. Vortigern looks on his son, whom he had held in his arms when he first came out wailing into the world from his mother’s quim, when he had placed a kiss upon his forehead, his first boy. He remembers how small he was, how strange it was to hold this tiny, defenceless animal with something like love.

  Behind the boy’s broken corpse comes a man. He is a tall man, and broad-shouldered, and his hair is yet strong and black, and his sword is bloodied. The man looks at Vortigern and smiles, and Vortigern is angered by how many teeth, healthy and whole, the man still has left in his mouth.

  ‘Uther,’ he says.

  ‘Vortigern.’

  They watch each other. And Vortigern remembers one night, it must have been December, and the woods filled with snow, and the moon aglow over the trees, casting down molten silver. They had chased three Jutes across the forest, their breath foggy in the cold, and no sound but the breathing of the chasers and the chased, until they came upon their quarry like two foxes on a brace of hares, and made easy work of them until the snow was dark with the Jutes’ blood. Who the Jutes were and what they were doing this far from home and on a night like that he never knew, but they had emptied their purses all the same and stripped them of their coats and boots until the three lay naked on the snow. More snow fell, then. They raised their heads and watched the moon glow through the flurry of snow. He rememb
ers that night, the silence, and the three naked bodies on the ground. How still it was.

  ‘My wife,’ he says now. ‘Did you—’

  ‘You mean, your daughter?’

  ‘What’s mine is mine,’ Vortigern says; and that’s all there is to say. ‘But is she—’

  ‘Dead?’

  Vortigern nods. ‘I sent her away,’ he says unwillingly. ‘But I did not know if she made it out in time.’

  ‘Who gives a fuck?’

  Vortigern rises from the throne. The great sword, how easy it once was to lift it. Uther smiles. He waits, at ease.

  ‘As it comes to me it will come to you,’ Vortigern says.

  Their swords clash. Uther kicks the other man in the ribs and as he falls he lunges with the hidden knife and buries it in Vortigern’s neck. The blood spurts out, so much blood. It sprays the throne, the floor, Uther’s face. Vortigern raises his head one last time. For a moment he thinks he sees Merlin, standing quietly by the drapes, near the window.

  Uther waits. The usurper falls.

  Uther wipes the blade clean and takes his place on the throne.

  2

  The torches burn over Dinas Emrys. Uther’s soldiers are drunk on beer and mead. In the storerooms of the castle they had unearthed old Greek amphorae, imports from the vanished empire. Uther drinks the foreign wine, which tastes of the lead it is flavoured with. He stares out over the valley. Vortigern’s corpse burns on the pyre outside the gates. The moon rises in the night sky. Uther traces features on its face, light and dark areas that could be valleys or seas. The Greek, Democritus, believed it was a ragged world, hanging in the sky, with lofty mountains and hollow valleys. And once, escorting an Irish chieftain in that barbarous northern land, they had come across an ancient mound, built there who knew when, and there, upon a stone, were carved a set of maps of the lunar face. He remembers tracing the dark features with his finger, and as the new moon rose its light traversed the passage until it hit upon that same carved stone. Uther wonders if it is possible to reach the moon, somehow, perhaps by hitching a skein of geese to a carriage, and if so, what manner of warriors would be found there. The Greek, Democritus, believed that the world and everything in it was made of tiny things called atoms, beyond which there was no division, with only a void between them. And he believed, further, that there were many worlds, some young and growing, some old and in decay. And some had moons and some had none, and some had suns and some lived in eternal darkness. And though the Greek was dead centuries before, who was to say he was wrong. For Uther too had been offered a glimpse of other worlds than this, and he had seen his fallen comrades rise, and cast in silver moonlight walk the fairy paths to the place where the fair folk dwell. He has no love for that realm or for those who dwell there. Now he drinks of the old Greek wine, and stares out into the darkness, and the charred smell of the burning corpses on the pyre fills the air. It makes his stomach rumble.

  ‘My liege.’

  ‘Pellinore. What word?’

  The boy bobs his head. He has a long pale face and mournful eyes that remind Uther of a frog’s. He sways slightly on his feet, the effect of too much beer on someone ill-accustomed to it. His shirt is specked with dried blood.

  ‘The tally is complete. To wit, three working silver mines, a gold mine in Dolaucothi, fifteen garrisons collecting road toll, seven wineries of which only four are operational, five foundries, thirteen leather workers’ shops, fifteen hundred heads of cattle—’

  The list goes on. Uther nods in time to the words. His now, all his.

  ‘Three sail ships, twenty skin boats, five flat-bottoms, one Roman warship, a quinquereme, unseaworthy and with no crew who have the knowledge to pilot her. Finally with regards to Dinas Emrys, a full inventory has been carried out. Three chests of coinage, five of jewellery, some of good quality, one hundred amphorae, seventeen serving girls in working order, thirteen hundred and twelve sacks of grain, a well-stocked library of seventeen books, my lord—’

  Pellinore sounds wistful, here. Then he pauses, hesitant.

  ‘Well, boy?’

  ‘And one prisoner, sir.’

  ‘A prisoner?’

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if you saw him for yourself.’

  Uther rises. The campfires burn to the horizon. Overhead the stars are thick as dust. This castle rises high above the hill, overlooking the river valley. Uther follows the pageboy down and down and down, along a Roman spiral staircase, until it feels to him that he is burrowing into the ground, descending into the chute of a mine.

  At last they reach a shaded glade. Though there are soldiers everywhere in the castle grounds there are none here, and Uther’s skin itches. The glade is lit by molten moonlight and sitting at its heart is a calm pool of water. Uther can taste it on his tongue, the witchery of this place. He draws not his sword but a short, nasty blade he carries with him always. Meteorite iron, and crudely fashioned, by a race of people who had lived and died long centuries before any Roman engineer ever set foot in this savage land of Britain.

  The pool, he sees on his approach, is not abandoned. A youth lies on the bank, pale and pretty with straw-blond hair, naked from the waist up. He is chained in iron to a metal rod driven into the ground. The moon shines down on the youth, the pool, the short tended grass. Uther’s boots sink into the soft ground. Though Uther moves softly the boy is aware of his approach. He turns his head and smiles.

  It’s in the eyes, Uther thinks. The eyes that remind one of a cat or a lizard or a snake. Something not quite human, anyway. Disconcerting eyes. And the boy’s flesh is unmarred by life’s little indignities; no scars or blemishes of any sort, no pox, no acne. A lazy smile, for all that Uther is certain the iron shackles give the creature pain.

  ‘The king is dead,’ the boy says. ‘Long live the king.’

  ‘Why did Vortigern have you imprisoned here?’ Uther inquires.

  ‘He had asked for a prediction, and got one he didn’t like.’

  ‘What did you predict him, boy?’

  ‘His death. Your coming.’

  ‘I can see how he would not take to it kindly,’ says Uther.

  The boy shrugs. ‘Many would make out that they want to know their fate,’ he says. ‘But no one ever does, not really. Besides, what’s there to say? Every prediction ends in death.’

  ‘An easy trade, then.’

  ‘If you say so, liege.’

  ‘You have a mouth on you, don’t you, boy.’

  ‘Yet here I am,’ the boy says, and laughs, and lifts his arms to rattle at the iron chains.

  ‘You have a name?’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’

  ‘May I inquire what it is?’

  ‘What’s in a name,’ the boy says. ‘By giving names to things we lose perception, a way to see more clearly. We give a name to things and think, by doing so, we know them.’

  ‘His name is Merlin, sire.’

  The boy, this Merlin, sticks out his tongue.

  ‘Profession listed as astrologer and wizard. Parentage, of no mortal man.’

  ‘Such things as you I’ve seen, in villages and hamlets all across this land,’ says Uther. ‘And usually with their skulls bashed in as infants. How is it that you live?’

  ‘Looks can be deceiving.’

  Uther sighs. ‘I can see why Vortigern chained you up,’ he says. ‘You’d try the patience of an Eastern saint.’

  ‘Look, sire, bash my head or set me free, but I grow tired of this conversation. I mean you no harm.’

  ‘What future do you see for me?’

  ‘I told you, there is but one answer, lord.’

  ‘Before my death, you impetuous cur.’ But he says it without malice.

  ‘You’ll live,’ Merlin says, simply.

  ‘Live well?’

  ‘You are a king.’

  Uther laughs. ‘Why should I let you go?’

  ‘I bear you no ill will, King Uther. And perhaps I can be useful. Sire, you have power.’

  ‘So
?’

  The boy licks his lips; perhaps nervously. Though Uther doesn’t think the boy does anything without a conscious purpose.

  ‘As bees are drawn to flowers so it is with me, lord.’

  ‘Bees feed on flowers,’ Uther says. He frowns, for he does not like the implication.

  ‘Yet they also help them.’

  ‘Let him go,’ Uther says.

  The pageboy, Pellinore, just stares.

  ‘I said, let him go!’

  ‘Lord, he’s a—’ Pellinore says, and then stops, confused. ‘I know not the word for such as he.’

  ‘Never question me again, Pellinore.’

  Uther strides to the chained boy. He kneels beside him and pulls roughly on the iron shackles. The boy grimaces with sudden pain, the iron chafes against his naked wrists and ankles. He hisses, like a snake.

  ‘It burns,’ he says.

  Uther leans in close, speaks softly. ‘You will serve me?’

  ‘I will serve.’

  Perhaps it is that the ambiguity of the boy’s answer registers with Uther, but does not concern him overmuch. For he is king. He pulls on the chains one last time, until the boy lies sprawled belly down on the grass, his head nearly touching water. Uther holds the back of Merlin’s head and pushes, until the boy’s face is submerged. He watches the bubbles rise and the boy’s slim, pale body buck and thrash. At last, as the boy’s struggle grows weak, he lets go. Merlin’s head rises above the water and he sucks in air, coughing and spluttering.

  ‘Remember this moment, boy,’ Uther says. ‘Remember I cupped your breath in my hand, so it would not extinguish.’

  ‘And I am ever grateful, liege. Now will you let me go?’

  ‘I will.’

  He unties him. The chains, still tethered to the iron pole, flop to the ground, useless now. No longer earthed, the prisoner regains his smile. He rubs his wrists, but makes no mention of the pain.

  ‘It’s funny,’ he says. ‘I waited here for you all this time, yet when you came your eyes were green, not brown.’

  ‘Get up, Merlin.’

  ‘My King.’

  Uther strides away. The banquet waits, his men, the flames, and seventeen serving girls in good working order. ‘Get him something to wear and some scraps from the kitchens,’ he says.