The Pendragon Inheritance

The Pendragon Inheritance

Gavin Chappell

Copyright Gavin Chappell 2011

Published by Schlock! Publishing at Smashwords

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Prologue: Tintagel

Chapter One: Departure

Chapter Two: The Sword of Power

Chapter Three: Lords Spiritual and Temporal

Chapter Four: Lot and Morgaine

Chapter Five: Bedegraine

Chapter Six: Arthur Advances

Chapter Seven: Triumph and Disaster

Chapter Eight: The Battle for Carohaise

Chapter Nine: The Warlord

Chapter Ten: Guinevere

Prologue: Tintagel

Merlin watched bleakly as artillery boomed and smoke billowed from the valley below. King Uther’s cannon continued to bombard the Duke of Cornwall’s position. Gorlois, the Duke, was entrenched on the far side of a run-down council estate that straggled along the main road.

The big guns boomed, and far off, amid the jerry-built buildings, another shell exploded, sending up another plume of dust. Retaliatory gunfire cracked out from the houses, causing a line of infantry advancing cautiously across the muddy field to fling themselves to the ground and return fire. Again the big guns boomed. Merlin turned to look sardonically at his king.

Clad in his best battledress uniform, Uther Pendragon was watching the carnage through a pair of field-glasses. His red dragon standard fluttered from the bonnet of his staff car nearby. Around him, his officers were talking quietly amongst themselves.

There was the bluff Scot, Urien, Earl of Moray, who was brigadier over several regiments; his carrot-haired fellow-countryman Lot, Marquis of Lothian, Chief of the Defence Staff, stood sneering at his side. Standing a little away from them, his eyes on the king, was young Leodegrance of Cameliard, whose forces were small but whose courage and loyalty undoubted. Merlin knew that they had been Uther’s right-hand men since the struggle against the dictator Vortigern. Before Uther had succeeded his brother as king, before he had succumbed to the arrogance, the blind passion, the mad folly that had led him to this – war with his own people.

King Uther lowered the field glasses and stroked his thick black beard with a gauntleted hand. He gave a self-satisfied smirk.

‘We’ll hammer him,’ he shouted above the roar of the guns. ‘We’ll draw him out and crush the rebel!’

‘Uther,’ said Merlin, in his soft South Welsh lilt. ‘This lunacy has gone on long enough. Admit you were in the wrong; make peace. Igraine doesn’t even want you.’

‘But I want her,’ Uther replied passionately. ‘I am the King. I rule by divine right. My subjects must obey me – or suffer the consequences. Who gave the order to cease the bombardment?’ he demanded suddenly, as quiet settled on the battlefield.

‘Nentres of Garlot is in command of the artillery,’ Lot told the king. ‘Do you want the bombardment to continue?’

‘Yes,’ said Uther. Then his eyes widened as he saw the reason for the halt. A contingent of rebel tanks issued from the cover of the council estate. ‘No! He’s trying to break his way out. Advance the anti-tank guns! Move the infantry up for a close assault!’

Orders were given, and soon the Duke’s tanks were met with a hail of anti-tank gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. Uther seemed satisfied. He watched intently as the royalist infantry charged forwards; the two sides soon met amidst the mud and confusion in the lea of the ruinous council estate.

Merlin regarded the king impatiently as the staccato noise of gunfire broke out afresh. Was there no reasoning with the man? This war might spread; the men who had supported Uther’s rise would not accept his tyranny, even if the heathen militants had been pacified. It was ever the way; the British always turned to conflict amongst themselves when external threats were absent.

The King wanted the Duke’s young wife, Igraine. She was a beauty, Merlin had seen that himself when she came to the king’s coronation; and he had little time for women. But she was the cause of all this war; she, or Uther’s lust for her. Reports suggested that Gorlois had entrusted his family to the protection of an armed compound several miles behind the lines. A thrust in that direction would be countered immediately by the Duke’s forces. Any mass troop movements would be identified for what they were, and the Duke’s army was big enough to fight Uther’s current forces on equal terms.

Could the woman be abducted in a commando raid? Would Merlin be able then to broker some kind of peace deal? At the moment he had no hope of bringing about peace between the proud stubborn men who confronted each other across the battlefield. The work of many years might be wrecked in a single day. Before anyone knew it, the heathens would be rising in the east, bringing over more of their supporters from Germany and Scandinavia; it would be as if they were back in the darkest days of the ineffectual, corrupt Vortigern regime.

An idea occurred to Merlin. He smiled craftily, and went to the king’s side.

***

Uther looked doubtfully at the old man as he outlined his plan. Merlin had been his brother Ambrosius’ counsellor before, and Vortigern’s before that, if unwillingly. They had known each other for a long time, but their acquaintance had not always been a happy one. Uther often suspected Merlin of manipulating events to achieve obscure ends of his own: he was determined to be no man’s puppet. But was Merlin really a man?

‘You say you’ll smuggle me behind the lines?’ he broke in. Merlin looked levelly at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows. ‘You can get me into Igraine’s presence – into her bed? Even if I believed you, what do you get out of this? You’ve opposed me so far.’

‘That is because you are tearing the country apart,’ Merlin snapped. ‘The country your brother won back from Vortigern and his mutinous allies. If you get what you want, you’ll have no reason to continue this suicidal war.’ The old man smiled thinly. ‘But there is a price to pay, Uther.’

Uther grimaced and laughed cynically.

‘A Faustian pact?’ he said. ‘Do you know what they say about you in the papers, Merlin? That you’re the Devil’s own son; that you were born to be the Antichrist. Am I to believe that superstitious nonsense now? What do you want?’

‘If you sleep with Igraine tonight,’ Merlin said, looking off into the distance, where gunfire and explosions lit up the darkening sky, ‘you will father a son upon her. That son will grow up to be greater than his father. I want you to give me the child, as soon as he is born.’

Uther gazed at him incredulously. ‘How can you be so certain?’ he demanded. ‘Is this more of the nonsense you bewildered Vortigern with, you Welsh wizard? He was a superstitious fool. I won’t fall for it. Anyway, what are the chances of me fathering a son on Igraine tonight? It’ll be a long fight before I can break through Gorlois’ lines.’

‘I could make it quicker,’ Merlin said. ‘But you must agree to my terms.’

Uther regarded him for a moment, then shrugged. ‘I swear, on my honour as king, that if you can get me to Igraine before tonight’s over,’ he said, ‘you can have anything you ask for. But you won’t. It’s impossible.’

Merlin smiled coldly.

***

As the battle raged on in the valley below, the king’s companions retreated to the canteen tent to eat their supper. Uther ate in his own tent alone except for his personal bodyguard Ulfin. Merlin appeared again, at the tent flap.

‘All is ready,’ he told the king, standing between the two sentries on duty outside. Uther looked quizzically at the old man.

‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve worked out some way to smuggle me across the lines.’

Ulfin looked from Uther to Merlin and back. ‘Don’t trust him, your majesty,’ he said urgently. ‘There’s no way you could cross the lines, even at night. This is some trick.’

‘It is the Duke who will be tricked,’ Merlin said. ‘I tell you, Uther, I can ensure you cross the lines, reach the house in Tintagel where Gorlois’ wife is staying, get you past the guards, and into her bed. But you must trust me.’

Ulfin put his hand on the king’s arm. ‘And I say don’t trust him,’ the bodyguard said in a low voice. ‘You’ve heard all the stories about Merlin. Vortigern trusted him. See what happened to him.’

Uther threw off Ulfin’s hand. ‘Merlin has always worked for the benefit of the Pendragon dynasty,’ he said slowly. ‘I trust him not to betray me. But how can I believe,’ he added, addressing Merlin, ‘that you can do what you say? How will you accomplish this?’

‘Follow me,’ said Merlin. Abruptly, he turned on his heel and vanished from the tent. Uther looked after him in annoyance. He turned to Ulfin. Wordlessly, the bodyguard shook his head. Uther scowled, rose from his camp stool, and strode past the guards and after Merlin.

After a moment’s hesitation, Ulfin followed them both.

He caught up with his king and Merlin at the edge of the camp. Occasional flares lit up the night, and the wind’s moan was broken by a distant chatter of small arms fire and the dull crump of explosives. A helicopter stood on the churned up grass beyond the last line of tents.

‘This will get past the lines?’ Uther said. ‘They’ll pick it up on their radar, and shoot it down.’

Merlin smiled humourlessly. ‘It is fitted with a device that makes it invisible to radar,’ he said. ‘The device transmits a high frequency beam that jams the enemy’s transmitters. We can slip over the lines undetected.’

He opened the helicopter door. Uther halted and looked at Merlin. ‘An ingenious invention,’ he remarked. ‘It’ll help with the war effort. Care to share it with your king?’

Merlin smiled again. ‘No,’ he replied. He leapt up into the cockpit, and beckoned Uther to follow him.

Ulfin didn’t believe a word of it. How could Merlin have such a device when no one else did? Had he invented it? If so, why not put the device on the market, make himself a millionaire? Uther followed the old man. Ulfin hurried up to join him. Uther caught sight of his bodyguard.

‘I didn’t tell you to come,’ he snapped. Ulfin halted with one hand on the helicopter’s side, anxious. He couldn’t let the king fly off into danger without him.

‘Leave him be,’ said Merlin from inside. ‘He could come in handy.’

Ulfin followed Uther into the small, cramped cockpit. He sat quietly at the back as Merlin prepared for takeoff, studying the old man suspiciously. Merlin’s unexpected kindness made him warm to the old man slightly, but he still could not believe that they would cross the lines in safety. Perhaps he should have told Lot or one of the other Lords.

Moments later, it was too late. They were airborne, and the noise of the rotor blades stifled all attempt to talk. Ulfin gazed grimly down at the battlefield far below them, where explosions blossomed soundlessly like roses of fire and tracer fire seared the blackness. So far so good. But surely the Duke’s forces would spot them soon. Was this how he would die, at his king’s side? All those years he had served Uther, since the days of