"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.
I walked across to where he lay, and it seemed to take hours for me to reach him. He scrabbled for me with clawed fingers, shrieking and spitting. I grasped the sword's hilt and pulled it free from where it was trapped in the fold of his legs, feeling it cut through more meat as I dragged it away. My face felt frozen. Caius lay behind Seneca, his screaming grandson clutched protectively in his left arm. The blood had ceased to pump from the wound in his neck. He was very still. I looked at his face, so pale, and time slowed down once more as I flexed my fingers around the hilt of the great sword. Then, ignoring the screams and sounds he was hurling at me, I raised Excalibur high above my head and swung it down with all my strength, striking Caesarius Claudius Seneca's head from his body. Plautus said, "Good man!" in a blood-choked voice, and I heard one last crash from behind me. I did not need to look to know that he had fallen on his face, onto the hilt of the sword that protruded from his chest.
Moving slowly, I crossed the room to the pile of garments that had been stripped from Enid earlier and draped them across her ravaged, nude body. Then I picked up my great-nephew and carried him out of that slaughterhouse.
The baby quieted as we walked through the warm, sunlit afternoon. I carried him in the crook of my left arm, the way his Grandfather Caius had carried him, and in my right I clutched Excalibur. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the sounds of battle, but I did not care. There was a lark singing in the sky high above me and a blackbird trilling close by. I heard my name being called and heard hoofbeats coming towards me at the gallop, but I didn't care. The forge would be quiet and safe for the baby, and it would be dark and warm. That was all I cared about.
I, too, had to find a dark, safe place, dark enough to hide me from the horrors tearing at my mind.
EPILOGUE: SUMMER, 401 A.D.
Ullic clapped me on the shoulder, got up from his stool and went out into the bright, hot day, leaving his heavy, ceremonial helmet on the bench beside me. It crossed my mind to call him back for it, but then I thought that, eagle helmet though it might be, it was not going to fly away and he would come back for it later. I smiled at the thought and reached for the pot of polishing oil I had been using, but my outstretched fingers caught the rim of it and the pot overturned, spilling the thin oil over my work-bench. I cursed and scrambled to pick up the odds and ends threatened by the spill, and felt a lance of remembered pain pierce me as my hand closed over a rolled scroll that had lain forgotten there at the back of my bench for months. I stood as though petrified for a few moments clutching the thing, and then I sat back on my stool, leaving the spilt oil to do what it would and unrolling the parchment for the second time since I had received it.
Greetings, Father,
You have been proven prophetic. Stilicho has recalled me to Rome. The barbarian King Alaric — how unlike our own dear friend — and his Visigoths stand poised to attack the Motherland itself. My preparations are being made in haste, for I must move with all possible speed. Stilicho's word is peremptory. "Come at once," he bids me. "Bring your men and leave all else behind." That, in this case, means horses, since I have no way of shipping out all my stock at such short notice. Your commission from Stilicho entitles you to have what I cannot take with me.
I have dispatched word to my depots in Glevum, Durovernum and Londinium itself to expect your men, who will take the horses I have left for you. In all, there will be six hundred and eighty head. Collect them quickly. I proceed in haste, but there may be others who must follow later. I know you will use the horses well. I shall return for them some day.
I must rely on you to use your powers of explanation and persuasion with Enid. I have tried to write to her, but find I am unable to write the words I ought to. My wounds have healed, but they have left me speechless and unlovely, so she is encumbered with a husband who is both ugly and absent. Explain to her, if you will, that these cancel each other out. I will return, some day. My love to Publius Varrus and his family. Look after my wife and my son while I am gone.
Farewell, Picus.
Addendum: I hear nothing of Seneca since I received my wound. He may have died in the fighting in the north. I hope so. If he still lives, however, he will sail with me to Stilicho's command.