Once more her voice carried. But it was not on the long, low, reaching note with which she had spoken across the length of the Plain to Morgan. This time it was high, silver and clear-but it carried all across this end of the open space.

“Forgive me, my friends!” she called. “I have failed to help you with OUR foemen; but I have pushed Morgan le Fay and all her magicks, like those little devil-heats, from this ground. She will not come again, for this is my ground and she will not again risk public shame. But now I must take me to my castle to make myself safe against her wrath, for she is a bitter hater. But I will watch you win this day from afar, by my own ways!”

Jim turned from staring at the late-afternoon-lit earth where they had stood, and saw Dafydd holding a war-arrow. Jim stared at it, also, for a second, before seeing what was different about it-its shaft was colored black.

“We pass messages with such as these,” said Dafydd, holding it up. “A man who has the message sends the arrow to the next down the line, he to the man just beyond him, and so on, until it reaches one close to me, here. This just came. Those against the Knights are advancing.”

“Advancing? Are they mad?” Brian exploded. “That formation was made for standing against attack, not making it. They will never hold their places in the formation if they start to move!” He took a step forward, shielding his eyes against the late-afternoon sun. “Damme! I cannot see from here if they are in motion or not! But how could Cumberland be that much of a damn fool? His knights advancing, maybe-though it would be throwing away some of their advantage-but once the spearmen are in place they must stay there, or all falls apart!”

“Cousin Dafydd, can I speak?”

It was the tall, thin bowman asking. Now, close up, Jim could see the beads of sweat on his forehead; and his chest still heaved with deep breaths. He may have been last in the message line, and needed to run-sprint would probably be a better word for it-to get here as quickly as he could; only to have to wait while others talked. He spoke, interestingly, in English.

“Surely, Cadoc,” said Dafydd.

“The spearmen it is that have been roped together, so they cannot change their places.”

“Roped?” said Brian. “But by all Hell’s fires, that would only keep them in order as long as they held their place! If they tried to move, they would trip over their spearshafts and each other. It is beyond reason, this moving, I tell you, James!”

“Maybe, after what Northgales did, his men of coat armor are out of control,” said Jim. “Maybe they started to move and he hasn’t been able to stop them. They could be wild to get at the Knights.”

“It could be...” Brian’s mouth was a thin line. “But if so, we must speak Pellinore immediately with word of it. That Plain tricks the eyes. They may be closer and moving faster than we think. Too much delay here, and there will not be distance enough for our steeds to reach full gallop encounter-“

He rose on his toes, leaning to one side to look between the two Knights of the Round Table who sat their unmoving horses in front of him.

“-Messires, I desire your attention!” he was saying. “There is one thing above all you must keep in mind. They outnumber us, and each Knight who falls on our side hurts us more deeply than four falling on theirs. Do not, then, risk yourself foolishly, or whoever is on either side of you, by letting yourself be carried away in the heat of the melee. You will fight as you have always fought-“

“Not that way-this!” shouted Jim, catching Brian by the arm as he was about to follow the horses of the Knights. Jim pulled him in the opposite direction. They had been standing almost behind the last Knights on the right of the line. Now, only a little end run took them around the last horseman and into the open, where Jim could finally see the one who had interrupted Pellinore.

An actual crown also sat on the helm of the man who carried the shield: and forward of its brightness, high on the front of the helm, rode the gleaming shape of a dragon with wings outstretched in flying position. A Badge that was the dragon of Wales, from which came Arthur’s family name of Pendragon.

Jim had had that exact version of the King’s arms described to him too many times by Brian and others of his generation who had developed a recent new interest in the Legends, not to recognize them now, in actuality. But Arthur was alone, unattended, unfollowed. The arms should have been displayed on a great banner carried behind him. But that was the least of the differences in what Jim had ever expected to see if he ever set eyes on the legendary King.

Arthur’s beard, and his hair that was visible, was pure white, but curling pugnaciously forward from chin and upper lip. The bones and frame of his body were larger than those of any man present, except Pellinore’s. Over his mail shirt he wore a black-appearing jupon, a sort of long, sleeveless vest; and the chain mail over it, molding itself to his body as linked or knitted goods of any material-even metal links-might do. It showed both itself and the jupon as curving in from the broad chest to a waist as narrow as it might have been in late youth or early manhood-or that of a man whittled away by great age.

Indeed, like his Knights, he was old beyond the meaning of ordinary years. Very, very old. Only the remembered sound of the great, ageless trumpet of his voice a moment before, and a strange fiery light in his eyes, argued with the evidence that showed itself in the rest of his appearance. Those two exceptions, and the indomitable outward curl of his mustache and beard-as if he stood ready to challenge the world-these alone were elements of Arthur as Jim might have imagined him earlier.

But why such a great look of age? Jim’s mind spun. Nearly all the Original Knights of the Legends in Lyonesse were showing signs of middle years; but none were ancient in appearance, as this man who now came riding and ordering-for his words had been no less than an order-that they not go without him.

Then things fell into place.

In this land of Legends, the Knights that belonged to them had lived far beyond their time. Centuries, indeed, had passed since that time when they might have lived-and died. Only Arthur had not been one of them, but elsewhere; and while perhaps he could not die while he was in the minds of those who remembered him, any more than they could-perhaps he might not have had the protection of what the others had benefited from, here in Lyonesse.

So this was the greater of the two leaders that those of Lyonesse had wished to have with them in this moment? He who had been King and greatest in battle, as Lancelot was greatest in tournament, still sat straight in his saddle and rode strongly; but that large body of his must now weigh a full hundred pounds less than it had in his fighting prime.

All these thoughts shot through Jim’s mind like a single bright flash of silent lightning before a thunderstorm, leaving a hush, a feeling of everything holding for a moment, in doubt and waiting-and in that moment Jim noticed a small, dark shape that had been riding on the cantle of Arthur’s saddle.

It leaped down, revealing itself as a gray squirrel. It ran toward him, scampering among the hooves of the Originals’ horses, covering the distance to Jim in long leaps, as if he was the only other person there; until with one jump it reached and clung to the leathers of his saddle, pulled itself on up to the pommel before him, and sat hunched there a second, looking him straight in the eye, with a dead leaf held in its mouth.

And a voice spoke in Jim’s head, a hard, final voice.

“NEVER ASK THIS OF ME AGAIN, Jim Eckert! I told you none can see the future while meddling with the present. But I sent your messenger on- I will do no more for you or any other, hereafter!”

He had only time to recognize Merlin’s voice. Then the squirrel had dropped the dead leaf on his leg, leaped from the saddle, and was gone.

The squirrel and Merlin’s message had occupied no more than a brief moment; but Jim saw now that this had been long enough for the Knights of Lyonesse to be transformed. They had been all business so far-perhaps a little silent and grumpy between themselves-but all that was swept away now. Their attention was all on Arthur and their voices clamored-welcoming him. The fact that Arthur was only a shadow of what he must have been when they last saw him appeared to make no difference to them at all.

So powerful was that feeling of theirs as they crowded forward, all trying to be close to Arthur but not so close that they intruded on the space around him that a King should have, that Jim found himself infected by it. He felt what must be Arthur’s gaze upon him, looked back in surprise, and realized that it was only a trick of those remarkable eyes. That gaze at the same time seemed also on each of the Knights before him, individually. But as Jim watched, the King turned to face Pellinore.

“King Pellinore”-his voice, lower now, but still resonant with that trumpet note-“will you accept me among these good Knights as one of your army?”

“My Lord and King,” said Pellinore. “They and I are yours to lead.”

“Then-“ cried Arthur, once more with his full voice, his eyes blazing from one end to the other of the line of those who faced him as if they would touch with his own fire everyone there, including Jim and the others behind them, “-follow me, my Knights!”

He reined his tall horse around to ride toward the far end of the Plain, where the dark line was approaching across it; and with a great shout they all charged forward behind him.

“James!” said Brian, in a low voice, but fiercely, holding back hard on his reins as Blanchard tossed his head and danced.

“Brian-“ Jim broke off. A chill touched him inside. Something in him was telling him that this was the moment he had been warned against. Clear and sharp in his memory, he heard the words Merlin had spoken in darkness, after Jim had spoken of Brian’s captivity, the first time Jim had talked to that greatest of seers and magicians.

“If you had not told me what you did, I would not have revealed where he’s kept, for if he is left there, he’ll suffer a while, hut live. However, if you find and free him, he may face a sorrowful death from which I fear no one, even you, can save him.”

“No, Brian!” he said-and saw Blanchard, infected with his master’s emotion, was fighting the bit to go forward. “I’ve got a bad feeling about that. We aren’t supposed to go! You mustn’t go!”

“Forgive me, James! There can be no greater moment than this! Betide me weal or woe, I must ride!”

He loosened his reins, and Blanchard bounded ahead, chasing the wave of armored men already at a canter and breaking into a gallop, overtaking them.

It had been no use, Jim told himself, looking emptily after this one closest friend he had made in this early century. Brian would have gone regardless-unless he had been still a prisoner of the Lady of the Knight More Bright Than Day. Being who and what he was, he could never have held himself back from this moment.

The only possible thing to do now was try to catch up with him-for Jim to do whatever he could to get him back alive.

Even as he thought this, Jim became aware that Gorp had not been immune to the excitement, any more than Blanchard or all the other horses. A wild excitement seemed to have taken them all, as it had the men. The second he relaxed his automatic hold on the reins, Gorp snorted and lunged forward-not swiftly, as Blanchard had, but thunderingly, like the overgrown cart-horse he actually had been before Jim had pressed him into service as a destrier.

In any ordinary situation, it would have been impossible for Gorp to catch up with the fleet-footed Blanchard, who for all his size and weight was one of the fastest horses Jim had seen in this world. But Brian, intoxicated by the prospect of the battle, would not override, or even crowd close to, the line of the Original Knights-although that line, as such lines generally did, was already beginning to resemble the forward dash of a mounted mob, rather than the disciplined, all-side-by-side cavalry charges that filmmakers in Jim’s time had brought their audiences to expect.

Jim gained, accordingly; fast enough that he was no more than half a dozen horse-lengths behind Blanchard’s powerful hindquarters, when the Knights ahead collided with the front line of Cumberland’s horsemen. Jim, rising in his stirrups could see beyond them the ranks of foot-spearmen-halted, but still in order, untouched, roped together and holding their thick, twelve-foot spears-but unable to be useful to the few of Cumberland’s men who were still on horseback where the middle had been-and Arthur was hewing right and left in the midst of these, yards beyond the mass of his Knights.

The next moment, Jim was clinging to the pommel of his saddle to keep from being thrown from it; as Gorp, in spite of his height and weight, was almost knocked off his feet by other horses. Cumberland’s right-hand wing had cannoned into the melee from the side, into him and each other. And a second later, he had his shield held high over his head to ward off one of these riders, striking an overhand blow at him with what seemed to be a combination mace and ax.

Jim looked around frantically for another route-just in time to see another of Cumberland’s mailed horsemen, spear couched, charging at him. But as he turned to face the man and brought his shield around, the man’s eyes widened and he pulled back on his reins so hard his horse’s hind legs almost collapsed as it slid to a sudden stop.

“Ware!” shouted the man, lifting his spear and turning away. “Ware the Mage! Ware! Ware!”

Space widened around Jim, who suddenly realized that of course Cumberland- or even Morgan le Fay, for that matter-might, deliberately or in error, have described the arms painted on Jim’s shield-a dragon, with a border of the magickian’s red. Arms awarded by King Edward to Jim as a sort of reward for the fight at the Loathly Tower.

Now he could hear the warning being passed among all of the invaders; and no one came close to him. It was an eerie feeling, like being disembodied, to be ignored in the midst of this furious battle. Curiously, he found he was feeling left out.

He looked at the spearmen again. Some had gone down in some fashion; the rest were pulling themselves together into formation once more, cutting the ropes that bound them to those who now lay on the ground. In general, though, they were being all but ignored by the other combatants. How was it that they had taken such a hit and then been left alone?

But, Jim reminded himself, the why and how of that was unimportant. It was Brian he wanted to locate.

He stood up in his stirrups, hoping Gorp’s height advantage over nearly all the other horses here would make it possible to get a better general view of the battle.

What he made out was that all the main effort seemed to be in the area where Arthur now rode-easily recognizable by his size and his white beard; and Jim, staring at him, could hardly believe what he saw.

He had taken it for granted that Arthur’s days as a fighting man in any melee were long behind him. But what he saw proved no such thing. The King was still not only leading his Knights-but leading them by right of his personal battle skills.

Much of his younger muscle might be withered with age-though the effectiveness of his blows did not seem to bear out even that much-but the really amazing ability he was showing was a speed of reflex that would have been startling in someone highly trained and in his twenties. Jim could hardly believe anyone could do so well.

He watched as one of Cumberland’s iron-clad horsemen began a sword-swing at the white beard. But by the time the heavy blade might have reached Arthur, the King’s sword had struck back three times and the other was falling from his saddle. Jim remembered the QB being deeply moved as he had said “... When Arthur went to war, the earth fought for him, the sky fought for him. All fought for him. You cannot understand... you have not seen him as I have, his sword flashing like lightning in the melee...”

Well, Jim was seeing it now, and it was all true. Arthur’s sword was flashing like lightning, and the white sky of Lyonesse, though it still had no cloud in it, seemed closer to the ground, in the westering sunlight. The earth-the animals whom the QB had said would be here-it felt like all things would fight for what they owned; if not for such a King.

And suddenly Jim understood. Of course, it made sense. His wolf-wise friend had been correct. All living things here in Lyonesse would join together to fight for a common resource; and that was the Old Magic. Only the Old Magic was common to all. It made possible this land, this place where legendary people and beasts of all sorts lived together.

He spurred Gorp-something he had done only once before with the horse, having ordinarily no use for his spurs-toward the point where the Knights riding behind and with Arthur were thinnest-and some blind idiot from the forces of Cumberland chose that moment to come out of the melee and attack him.

It was a tall man, in his late thirties or early forties, with a clean-shaven face but with mad staring eyes and a small white froth on his lips, tinged with some darkness that might be blood-as if he had bitten them. There was nowhere for Jim to run. In any case, Brian had dinned into him “NEVER AVOID”-Brian’s point being that anything less than meeting an opponent head-on put you at an angle of disadvantage; and if Brian did not know what the answers were, Jim certainly did not.

Jim turned Gorp’s head accordingly, and the big horse, thoroughly excited by now and outraged by the spurs, could hardly wait to get at the enemy-whoever or whatever he might be, on two legs or four. The Cumberland knight had his spear couched. Jim had long since expended his on someone else, somewhere. He drew his broadsword, got his own shield up just in time, and they met.

There was a weird moment just before they collided, in which Jim seemed to glimpse a misty, winged shape around him. In the same instant he realized it was an attempt by his dragon self, triggered by the instinct of self-survival, to take charge of their shared body. Then it was gone as he and his attacker came together.

They hit shield to shield. There was the usual unbelievable shock. A horse’s ten to twelve miles per hour might sound small to someone brought up in the world where Jim had been born and raised; but his own weight and that of his horse, meeting another two such bodies, traveling at much the same speed in opposition, made for an impact that blotted out the surrounding world for a moment.

Jim found himself riding blindly toward the thicker part of the melee, where Arthur was still mowing his way through their enemies. Still half-stunned, but with his own instinct for survival fully at work now, Jim pulled Gorp up and reined around, ready to face an attack about to be made on his back.

But his opponent was gone. Then Jim saw him, lying on the ground now, not moving, a thin, dark stream coming from the lower corner of his mouth. He must have been badly wounded internally before he had ever charged at Jim-possibly somewhat out of his head-carried away with the idea of at least taking one other person else down to death with him. Jim felt a sudden strange sense of responsibility toward the man-as if somehow he could have saved the other’s life if he had thought quicker and reacted less suddenly and instinctively.

He pushed the thought from him, for now, however, as he found himself facing the spearmen; and suddenly, for the first time, he saw that at last the animals had come to the battle.

Perhaps they had been there all along, close to or even among the spearmen- the little ones, anyway-biding their time. But now these same smaller ones were covering the ground in great leaps as they went toward the melee itself. Unconsciously, he had been looking for the larger animals, the adult bears, the stags, the mature boars who would be impossible to miss.

But at the moment, all that he could see were the smaller animals, like the squirrels, stoats, and weasels, swarming up to the throats of spearmen in the first and second ranks; and, as he watched, there was a scream that rose even above the general sound of the fighting behind Jim for a moment.

He looked and now saw an arm upheld-but an arm already beginning to swell above its wrist, showing under a torn sleeve. That arm had been poisoned; and there was only one mammal with a poisonous bite, and that was the short-tail shrew. The man would not die from his bite; but the quick swelling could have frightened him into thinking he was about to do so.

Jim had always believed the short-tail shrew was a native of North America, alone. He had not expected to find it here in what had once been part of the island that was England-but if there were lions, why not short-tail shrews?

This was Lyonesse, after all, where anything might be possible-and as this thought came to him, he saw a black-maned lion-possibly the one with the family who had been at the amphitheater. It moved among the other forest animals, calmly ignoring them and not being threatened or attacked by any of the men. At a little distance behind him. Jim now made out a couple of large bears, smashing their way forward through the ranks of spearmen-effective in their way as Arthur was being in his, but by the use of massive strength rather than speed and skill.

There were now more animals than he thought could have been at the meeting in the forest; more than he had ever expected. The spearmen were being decimated; and now literal waves of small creatures were underfoot everywhere. As he watched, a stoat made a leap to the stirrup leathers of one of Cumberland’s horsemen; and, more quickly than any human could react, another jump to his saddle, and a third to his face, beneath the visor.

They were too small to kill easily or surely, individually; but they were more than a distraction to men fighting with all their mind and body concentrated on a human opponent.

The larger animals, Jim saw, were hanging back at the fringes of the battle, where they took opportunities, when they arose, to attack individual intruders who were isolated. Here, the bears and the stags with full heads of horns threatened life-and took it.

Pellinore had been right. Such as these had never and probably would never win a battle by themselves-but they were potent allies.

With a jerk, Jim’s thoughts went back to Brian. He whirled Gorp around and found that Arthur and those with him, including Brian, were not where he had seen them-it seemed only a few seconds before.

Then he located them-the knot of men that was Arthur, the men who guarded his back, and the men he relentlessly attacked, had continued to move farther into the thickest part of the mass of Cumberland’s fighters.

Arthur was still working wonders with the swiftest sword work Jim expected to see anywhere in his lifetime; and the Originals-with Brian inexplicably allowed among them-were matching and overcoming any concerted effort by the enemy to concentrate on the King. Then-with a shock-Jim saw something else that set alarm bells ringing in that part of him that had been Carolinus’s pupil these last few years.

Something like a wedge of white mist, but seeming much more solid than mist, was moving through the battle, creeping like mist over the ground and the bodies, and approaching-not Arthur, but Brian-following Brian as each new opponent drew him off to one side. No mist ever acted like that.

Everything Jim had ever learned cried Magic! out of that mist. It was unbelievable that Morgan le Fay could have come back so soon, unless she had some means of knowing for sure that Northgales was now elsewhere. If so, she was after Brian, rather than Arthur. Without quite knowing why he knew it, he was as sure of it as if Merlin himself had spoken once more inside him-the mist was the sorrowful death that Merlin had spoken of, approaching Brian now.

“Let him hear me in his head!” he commanded. “Brian! Look at me, Jim! Look to your left, and back toward the spearmen!”

Brian’s opponent took a blow on the helm from Brian’s broadsword; and slid, rather than fell, from his saddle. Brian reined the stamping, sweating Blanchard around to look for Jim at last... and finally saw him.