By Force Alone

by Lavie Tidhar

‘Many would make out that they want to know their fate,’ he says. ‘But no one ever does, not really. Besides, what’s there to say? Every prediction ends in death.’ ‘An easy trade, then.’ ‘If you say so, liege.’

‘What’s in a name,’ the boy says. ‘By giving names to things we lose perception, a way to see more clearly. We give a name to things and think, by doing so, we know them.’

Uther leans in close, speaks softly. ‘You will serve me?’ ‘I will serve.’

‘If this is my king’s desire.’ ‘It is,’ says Uther. ‘Then be it so.’ The boy stalks out. ‘Sheep? Sheep!’ he says. ‘A knife’s no toy to play with,’ says Maelor Gawr. ‘But it is useful,’ Uther says.

There are two types of men, those with swords and those without, and Merlin likes the men with swords. You know where you are with one of those.

The knife speaks. The knife makes a compelling argument.

A woman’s like a soldier, not worse or better, and subject to the same relentless force. A woman lives and dies by force alone.

“Choose life. Choose a home. Choose a great big fat palace to stuff all your money in. Choose a wench, any wench you please, to stick your old men’s dicks in. Choose a sword, choose a horse, choose blood, because if you are not warriors you’re nothing. Choose death. Choose life. Choose the fucking future.”

‘While you live, shine, have no grief at all, life exists only for a short while and time takes its toll.’

‘You hate the night creatures even more than you hate yourself.’ ‘They are nothing but shadows,’ Merlin says, ‘when the sun rises again over the West it shall burn them away into nothing.’ ‘Superstition is merely the child of fear,’ the ferryman says. ‘And fear is a condition of being human. If you expect an Enlightenment to occur centuries hence you are sure to be disappointed, wizard.’

The temple’s been abandoned for a century at least. It’s really nothing more than a stone altar that, in all honesty, could have been just a rock. But Merlin can sense it. The residue of worship in the old stone and the trees. People had come here. They had prayed. They poured their hopes and fears and dreams into this air, they murdered pigs here and the hot blood spilled and stained the ground. It’s in the roots and in the bark. Its faith. He smells it.

‘On, go on, then,’ the Green Knight says. ‘Take your best shot.’ ‘I would hate to kill you,’ Arthur says. The Green Knight shrugs. ‘And I would hate to die.’

‘I try not to miss things in the past. It’s a place you can’t get back to.’

‘Oh, no,’ the king says earnestly. ‘I never drink… wine.’

convey to them the warmth and nos-fucking-talgia of the tales. The glory of it all! The… The fucking chivalry! But they don’t fucking listen, do they. They make him question everything. As though it’s all so awful, this story of Arthur, just a sad, simple tale of violence and greed.

walked out quietly and shut the door. They’d always had an arrangement, the queen and he. He isn’t sore. But now propriety’s abandoned, and in the stories they will write of him, in centuries hence, is this how they will tell it? That he’s a cuckold, old and weak? And why? Because a woman dared to choose her own affections? He knows she doesn’t love him. And as for him, he has no love for anyone but the sword.

Or will they see him as he truly was, just a guy like all of us, just a stranger on a crumbling truss, trying to make his way home?

The missionaries are making a run for it, it seems. They pick no sides beyond that of the winner. Their gospel, born in hot Judea, tempered in the blood of Rome, is ready like a blade to pierce the hearts of infidels on this remote, cold island.

Why would you die for this? he wonders. Would it not be better to simply live? But he has learned such questions have no answers a Merlin, with his mere logic, can answer. And so he watches the soldiers march to Camlann. It doesn’t really matter, he thinks, this matter of Britain. Just another way to pass the time.

Forever questing, in pursuit of that which eludes you – and isn’t that, in microcosm, life? Those men on the battlefield, they’re barely stories. Just build-up with a sudden end. At least Sir Pellinore, say what you will of him, will have beginning, middle and an end.

In time the deaths on that wide expanse of plain will vanish, and only the blooms shall remain. In time…

Whatever mystery takes place in that moment, that cessation – it happens. The heart stops beating and the pain is gone and the brain no longer thinks or feels or knows. There’s nothing so very miraculous about it all. And as for souls? Try catching those like butterflies in your net. Merlins can taste power; but when something dies it’s just… no more.

‘What will happen to him?’ Lancelot says. Kay’s eyes are wet with tears. Agravain, Owain, they stare at Merlin mutely, like lost children. He has to tell them something. ‘There’s, like, a magical island I can take him to,’ he tells them. ‘Where he’ll be healed of all his wounds. He’ll rest, there. Time flows differently there. He will be gone, perhaps a long while. But when the land needs him, he’ll return.’