NOVEL NEXT 4. Surrender, Interrupted
Gawain stares dumbly at the body of the messenger boy Gwilym. Hot anger rises in him, starting from his gut and burning into his brain. Nimue acts against me, outside my desires, against my authority. She stands behind the body of Gwilym and turns back to Gawain and her other comrades, a gloating and self-satisfied look on her face. Gawain feels his anger shifting upwards to rage; Nimue laughs with a high cackling sound, and he is incensed.
'Nimue!' he shouts. She shifts her gaze to him, her facial expression of gloating unchanged. 'Why...?' he continues but finds he cannot finish the sentence. Rage stops the flow of his thoughts. Nimue laughs again, softer this time, and smiles defiantly at him. She sees how angry I am, and she mocks me. She mocks me as if I were a child! Her mockery makes his anger feel like a barrel of charcoal consumed by fire and exploding.
Eormenric lets out a cry, and the other men come running from within the tent. Gawain sees the last man emerge from the tent, dressed oddly: long black robe, golden sash and golden belt. Not the normal druid clothing. He carries a staff that is twisted and wrapped in a silver material that glimmers in the small rays of the sun now piercing the clouds. Eormenric, Vortigern, the two princes, and the four Saxon chieftains rush towards Gwilym's body. Gawain's knights draw swords and advance towards them, keeping Gawain and Nimue behind them. The rebels stop their charge ten yards from Gwilym's body.
'You lying scum! you traitors! May your fathers shame you in life and death!' Eormenric screams. He is a heavy man, beardless, shorter than the others, dressed in a scale armor that is buckled with a leather strap across his wide chest.
Gawain raises his hand to calm Eormenric. 'We have no intention to cause you offense.'
'You say after you have offended us!' Eormenric replies. Vortigern, the princes, and the chieftains bristle behind him, weapons drawn.
'And yet, our intention is to accept your surrender and discuss the terms of it. That is the purpose of our coming to you now.' Nimue has put me in an impossible position. I must betray her and therefore betray our cause and alliance, or I must acknowledge the offense and give them leverage they can use to improve the terms we agree on.
'Your intention means nothing! It is what you have already done that has offended us! You have slaughtered one of our own in front of us, one who came to you under truce!'
'I acknowledge that he came to us under truce, but there - '
Eormenric cuts him off: 'Then that acknowledgement is all that we require to wish a curse on all your houses for your children and your children's children!' Eormenric spits after this announcement.
The invoking of a curse brings up Gawain's anger again: 'May I remind you, King Eormenric: you and your army are fighting for an evil cause, for a usurper who has now committed the unforgivable sin of patricide. Your gods and ours will never forgive the murder of a father.'
'King Mordred's father was a tyrant who cared not for any of our needs outside his own kingdom, family, and clan - and those who pledged groveling obedience to him! May a curse be -'
'Choose your next words very carefully, Eormenric. Better, leave them unsaid entirely. You are a traitorous dog and my opinion of you is lesser than that of a worm that I crush beneath my heel.'
Eormenric sputters, but Gawain continues: 'And I will tell you something now, that if I ever must tell you again, then on that day I will kill you with my own hands. There is one king in Britain, and his name is Arthur. He is the High King who reigns over all lesser rulers who would cast their authority over any of the people on this island. Save for those that Arthur the High King has granted the title of lesser king, and those are very few and honored indeed, it is treason to claim the title of king. So, you, Eormenric, are no king. You are a weak man serving a weak traitor who has killed his father and brought an eternal curse on his children and the children of those that serve him. Belatucadros, and blessed be the name of the great Bear of War, will never forgive you and he will never allow your children to live in peace for a single day of - '
Gawain is suddenly struck by an enormous wave of force that knocks him sprawling backwards to the ground. His vision explodes in white light and he is deafened. For the second time today, his brain feels like it vibrates against the inside of his skull. He wretches onto the ground but his stomach is empty. Only a bitter bile comes up, and he spits it onto the ground.
He looks to the other knights, all of whom lay stunned. Agravain and Gareth lay completely still, and he is filled with fear that they are dead. The other knights are rousing themselves, staggering to their feet. He too begins to drag himself to his feet, placing first one foot on the ground, then another, and then pushing himself upwards until he is standing. His head spins and his vision blurs. His hearing is still limited to a single ringing noise that does not stop. He feels as though he is in a tunnel with little bearing towards where he stands or what direction he faces.
Beside Gwilym's body, which has remained unmoved by the blast, he sees Nimue flat on her back. Her hair and face are covered in mud. Abruptly she leaps upward, bending her feet towards the ground and whipping her upper body forward so that she stands upright in one fluid motion. Gawain sees that her face is twisted in rage, and already she is working her hands in repetitive motions that he knows are the beginnings of a spell.
'Nimue, no! Do not!' he screams at her. He cannot hear his own voice. She either cannot hear him either or is just ignoring him. She continues the working of her hands, forming intricate patterns with nimble fingers, spitting towards the source of the blast. Gawain follows the direction of her rage and sees the man in black and gold leering in Nimue's direction, taunting her. Bela have mercy, that was a mage blast! He knows now that it is useless to try to stop Nimue: she was assaulted with magic, and she will not allow that to stand.
His attention snaps back to Nimue when he hears a wailing sound from her: a prayer to the Horned One. He has heard the witches make this same ululation in the far distance under the eaves of great oaks when he has stood the night watch on the walls of Camlann. Nimue's hands now have about them a strange gray glow, with a faint sparkle amidst the dull foggy light. She pulls her shift over her head and discards it behind her: her whole body is now surrounded by this emanating gray glow like a second garment of sheer light. She takes a clump of grass and mud and forms it into a ball, rolling it tightly such that it is hard packed and solid. Then, releasing the ball into the air so that it floats before her, Gawain sees that it too glows. But instead of the dull foggy light, the ball is brilliantly sparkling, a small silver sun that illuminates the entire hillside. Snatching the ball from the air with one hand and squatting to the ground, muddy hair falling over her shoulders and knees, she buries it. Gawain marvels that even buried, he can still see its light coming up from cracks in the ground.
Time seems to slow as he looks across at the rebel leaders, and their mage behind them. They all stare with bewildered expressions on their faces, except for the black and gold mage, whose thin hollow-cheeked face has drained of color. A ripping sound brings his attention back to Nimue, who now kneels over the spot where the ball is buried, her hands balled into fists that press down onto the spot as if to contain it. Then she raises both fists and brings them down solidly on the spot, and a blast one hundred times more powerful than the one produced by the black and gold mage resonates from the center of the earth. Nothing happens for several moments, and then the blast sounds like the galloping of ten thousand horses as it comes up and out of the ground, sending Nimue high into the air on a chariot of light. She spreads her arms wide and floats there, face turned to the sky. Gawain feels a warmth come over him, wrapping his face and arms, and he falls into empty space and knows no more.