Grummore could feel the cold seeping through his bones, reminding him of another r day, but a day forty years ago; when the fog drifting through the trees brought with it the icy touch of fear.
A day I’ll never forget — not if I live another eighty years.
He looked up at the naked, peeling trees, as if they were still a part of the memory, and watched as the last few stars in the sky faded with the coming dawn. He watched the night melting into a soft sapphire blue, and paused to rub the ruddy stump of his right leg, waiting a moment before tightening the leather straps holding his wooden leg in place. As he pulled on the straps he told himself not to dwell on the past, but think about what lay ahead. He looked ahead, through the trees, but the hoarfrost on the trees looked as if it had been slathered on, making the trees glow like dull candles; the frozen snow where the ice fell from the branches formed tiny hillocks amongst the roots.
I should’ve settled down years ago. I’m too old to be traipsing across the countryside now — much too old.
He looked down at his wooden leg and shook his head. He knew he’d ignore every bit of common sense he had, and that they’d be on the road again as soon as the boy woke up. He cursed himself for the stubborn fool he was, and then looked up over his shoulder as a shadow passed.
A common habit, he told himself, brought on by years of practical living. He wished he could believe it.
There’s nothing practical about this life.
Never has been.
He heard the horses whinnying — skittering nervously while stomping at the hard-packed ground — and it brought him back to the moment. He picked up the two feedbags, paused as the dark shadow passed overhead again. He looked up but all he could see was huge cumulus clouds rising up one on top of the other, and the breaking sun filtered in between. Still, a strange sense of dread slowly stole over him.
Aye, was it Death’s hand finally reaching out for me?
He stood up taller, bit by bit, feeling his age for all he was worth, before hobbling through the snow toward the horses and tying a feedbag around the first horse’s head. He patted the animal gently, nuzzling his whiskered cheeks against its neck as he breathed in the animal’s rich scent — deeply — letting his mind wander as he walked over to the second horse.
I’m definitely too old for this.
He knew it was an idea one part of him would refuse to accept. But he felt his age in the phantom itch of his missing leg every morning now, just as much as he felt it in his bones with the cold, or how seeing the snow where it stretched out across the distant fields filled him with a sense weariness. His age served as more than a reminder of everything he’d lost, and whenever he broke the ice on the water bucket in the morning he wondered how many more winters he’d live to see; when the wind picked up, coming down from the North and threatening to blow more snow and misery into his already miserable life, he always asked himself how much longer it would be until the end finally came?
One more day, that’s all I ask — even though I deserve a warm fire, with a hearth, and a good roof — just give me one more day.
Pulling his bearskin robe tighter he hugged his arms around himself and turned away from the horses. He limped over to the fire and picked up a large stick, trying to stir the flames back to life. He knelt in front of it, feeling the warmth of an ember or two hiding in the white ashes. He began throwing kindling on top of the embers, blowing the flames back to life. The heat felt good against his cheeks as he held his long hair out of his face.
As he lifted his head and looked passed the fire, he could see the tattered flag where it blew listlessly on top of the pole in the morning breeze. His flag.
The dragon’s a sad reflection of what it used to be — and for a moment, he thought of what it used to mean to him. So many things used to mean so much to him; the flagpole was once his lance.
“Trucido draconis, indeed,” he said, the sound of his voice a hoarse whisper in the silence of the camp.
It was a different world then, aye, and a different time, he thought as he stood up.
He remembered seeing the last of the Roman legions leaving when he was still a lad; and then came the warlords. They built fortresses, and gathered armies of brigands, and Pagans — mercenaries all — and it seemed as if the world had plunged itself into darkness, wallowing in the madness that followed.
And what did they leave us with when they left?
He shook his head at the memories. Even when the call went out to brave the Picts, and the Warlords united to face a common foe — what did they leave behind?
They left the dead where they fell, and burned the crops, that’s what they left us — death, disease, and famine, that’s always been their answer.
He picked up last night’s stew, hanging the pot on the hook over the fire. He was about to stir the stew with the stick he used in the fire, but paused. He looked at the stick, wiped the charred end of it on his bearskin robe and stirred the stew anyway, shrugging. He wouldn’t eat much, and if he found a hair in it, or a burned cinder, it wouldn’t make that much difference; it’ll add flavour, he smiled. He put the stick down and limped to the back of the wagon where Ector still lay inside sleeping.
How can anyone sleep that long and not be dead?
He moved the battered shield aside and untied the tarp covering the back of the wagon. It made him cold just looking at the boy. With the deer hide thrown off to the side, Ector had nothing but a homespun blanket keeping him warm.
How can he not be cold?
Grummore pulled his bearskin robe tighter. He reached into the wagon, picking up his broadsword, along with his bow and quiver, then threw the deer hide over Ector again, thinking he’d let the lad sleep while he went out to gather more firewood. He tied the wagon’s tarp closed again, replacing the shield. The fire was crackling when he returned to it, the small cast iron pot hissing like a cat. He limped back to the fire and stirred the stew again, tasting it off the tip of the stick and nodding to himself.
It needs more salt.
Strapping on his broadsword, he picked up the bow and quiver. He thought there might be game about, and Grummore was never one to let lunch drift far from his mind. He took up the wicker pannier he used for gathering firewood and kicked the fire down before hobbling across the small camp. He followed the frozen wagon ruts from the night before.
He thought about his youth as he limped through the snowy glade, entering the forest and pushing the branches aside carefully, listening to the soft crunch of the frozen snow under the footpad of his stump. Something about his smoking breath reminded him of the past. Again, he tried not thinking about the past. He wasn’t a man set to relive the days of yore for the sake of his sanity — where was the sanity in that?
At eighty-two, there was little in the world to comfort him; and little he wanted to dote over. His wife had died of sickness twenty-three years ago — it was the plague they said as they bled her white — and when his son and daughter-in-law died as well, he found himself caring for three-year-old Ector.
There’s nothing for you now but to burn down the cabin. That’s what they said — wouldn’t even let me bury my family — even after I agreed to let that old priest mumble his way through his Litany for the sake of her.
It’s a lot easier leaving it all behind when you lose everything, he told himself. And as time goes on, it’s easier to accept.
He knew it was a hard outlook, but he’d learned that everything about life was hard. His father told him life has a way of slipping away from you. And when it’s done, he added, you realize that all you have are moments strung together, leaving you with nothing more than a handful of memories — if you’re lucky. He was beginning to think the old man was right.
What he hadn’t expected was that his memories would be the kind he’d second guess for the rest of his life.
I should’ve died with the rest of them.
He felt the stump of his wooden leg sink into the frozen snow, the leather strap around his thigh slipping and then tightening again as he pulled at it unconsciously.
He drew the broadsword out of its rusty scabbard — enjoying the feel of grating metal through the softness of his boney hand — and began hewing and hacking at the branches and tree limbs as if they were the arms and legs of his forgotten foes. The snow on the branches sifted through the air like fog as he began dropping wood into the pannier. He sliced at a branch and thought about cutting through a man’s arm and hitting bone.
Ah, but that was another life, before I lived my real life.
At that moment, he came upon a stag in the clearing.
It seemed like an eternity before either man or animal saw each other, and he wondered how the animal hadn’t hear him chopping his way through the trees. The stag had its head down though, oblivious to everything around it as it chewed the frost-laden branches. At Grummore’s approach, the animal raised its head, staring at him as the light stole in through the woods, surrounding the animal in a brilliant aura. It was tall, majestic, a beautiful animal — the antlers as fine a pair as any he’d seen — and Grummore guessed the animal had to be at least a dozen years old.
It’s the self-same beast the Merlyn showed us fifty years anon, he told himself, smiling at his own simplicity.
It was just as tall and magnificent he noted, but instead of a red coat, that one was white — so white it looked silver in the distance. He remembered how they all called it Pelinore’s Questing Beast, and he half expected to hear the baying of hounds in the clearing behind him.
Grummore straightened to his full height and the beast raised its head and stared at him. It bolted through the underbrush as if it were an afterthought he may have had, bounding through the thicket as quick as the morning mist, leaving nothing behind but a few steaming droppings. Grummore sighed.
Sitting on a fallen log, he rubbed his aching thigh.
Now, that was a beast worthy of a quest.
He wondered if any man alive today was worthy of taking on such a quest. And it was a real quest, not the make-believe quest he told the boy they were following. It bothered him to think that theirs was the quest for a beast no man had seen for a thousand years, or that he was the last of a generation they were already calling legend — but it bothered him more thinking that if he was remembered for anything, it was as an embarrassment to that memory.
A man needs to be more than legend; I need to be more than a man. It’s the disbelief in their eyes that hurts the most, though.
He could see it in the eyes of the children they met. He could see it whenever they touched his battered shield, or his blemished broadsword; even the tattered armour he’d once taken such pride in. They laughed at the two old horses pulling the wagon, scoffed at the limp flag, and pointed at the faded words on the side of the tarp, asking what they meant.
“Trucido draconis,” he’d call out with a shaky voice, and then he’d pull at the pole that held the flag in an attempt to strike a regal pose.
“Dragon Slayer,” he’d meant to say, but of late the pole was getting stuck and Ector would have to help him with it.
When did I start calling it a pole instead of my lance? And what does it matter? It’s all a lie. And they know it.
Perhaps it’s the weather, he thought as he undid the ties holding his wooden leg in place. It was possible there was something inside, pinching it — it’d happened before. It didn’t take much to irritate the stump.
Some days he missed the leg more than others — even if the memory of having it was almost lost to him now. Then he’d remember that he’d been legless for more than forty years. He thought of his leg as an echo of his youth — the misspent youth he was trying to forget, along with the vanquished life he was trying to leave behind.
Like the morning fog at Barnham Down, he remembered.
And what if I’d died there? he thought, rubbing the naked stump and feeling the heat of the wound in spite of the cold. Or if I hadn’t taken wound there, but at Camlan Fields—the final battle as it turns out — the week after?
That field had numbered more than one thousand knights. Those who died were set on by robbers come to strip them of the brooches, beads, and jewellery they wore, those not quite dead, were slain.
It was more than just the end of us, it was the end of an Age.
He looked at the clearing, kneading his stump as he thought about the stag. It brought back bygone memories of his youth — of Camelot, and Questing; of jousts and journeys; Lancelot, Gawain, and Lamorack — and he thought as he tied his wooden leg back into place how the world would never see a time like that again. He sheathed his sword, and then pushed himself up, testing his weight on the leg and picking up the wicker pannier with an effort.
That feels better, he told himself as he began picking up the branches.