Perilous Times

by Thomas D. Lee

It must be one of the more organic ones, where the earth itself decides to shake his shoulder. Something shifting in the spirit of the realm.

The covenant with Merlin was fairly specific. Make this warrior whole again and surrender him back to the realm of the living, whenever Britain is in peril. Return him with his sword and shield and other tools of war, untarnished. When peril is bested, let him return to your bosom and sleep, until peril calls him forth again.

Riding through the old forests, you could never shake the feeling that there was a quest around the corner, put there by some greater power, whether that power was the Christ King or the Saxon gods or some older goddess of the trees. Arthur never seemed to notice. It seemed natural to him that things of import should occur in his proximity.

He learned a few hundred years ago that sometimes the most useful thing he can do is to just let himself get killed. Merlin’s covenant with the earth didn’t grant him the strength of an ox, it didn’t make his flesh repellent to arrows or bullets. It just allows him to return from the dead. So death, for him, means less than it might do for others. And somebody has to be the first one over the walls, the first one through the breach, the first one out of the landing craft and up the beach. Should that be somebody who can only die once, whose family would miss them? Or should it be someone who can die a thousand times, whose wife and family died a long time ago? There’s no question, when you think of it like that.

There are swords to be wielded by kings and then there are swords to be wielded for kings, with which to do their dirty work. His is the latter.

It’s easier to be free with your trust when death isn’t permanent.

“As far as I see it, people could do with a bit of suffering. Remind them to respect the earth they live on. Remind them to fear it!”

You can’t give a man a magic sword and then expect him not to break things with it. That’s what it means—Excalibur, Caliburn, Caledfwlch. Hard-Cleaver. It doesn’t mend divisions. It creates more of them.

Hate is the path of least resistance. He learned that a long time ago. Far easier for people to hate each other than it is for them to love themselves, so that’s what people

you never achieve anything in this world without making powerful men absolutely terrified for their lives.

At least in the old days you saw the look on their face, while your sword was in their guts. While the life slipped out of them. It kept you up at night. Made you think twice before doing it again.

But the problem with victory is that time keeps happening afterward, and people keep being people, killing each other for daft reasons.

All you can do is live in the new world, however strange it might be. Try to make it a better place for the people who live in it.

“Well, if there’s anything I’ve learned in all my time coming back, it’s that ordinary people can do amazing things if they put their mind to it. They can do miracles, if they choose to believe in themselves. And that’s as good as magic. Or almost as good, anyway.”

“People don’t need knights in shining armor to come along and save them. People need to start saving themselves. That’s how we get out of this mess. That’s how we fix the planet. By all banding together and saving ourselves. But people don’t want to do that; they want somebody else to do it for them. If you’ve got a hero around, you don’t need to do anything. You can sit back and relax and let them do all the hard work. It absolves you from having to take action yourself. That’s why people like the idea of heroes.

Sometimes killing people is the only thing that can make a difference.”

If she wants to save the world, she’ll have to do it herself.

We all have to get up and do it together.”

It’s probably easy to feel inhuman when you can hide your humanity behind masks and helmets. Makes it easier to do inhuman things. If she does end up being queen of anywhere, when all of this is over, she’ll get rid of uniforms before she does anything else.

Nobody has to do this alone, fight all of the evils in the world alone, save the world alone. The weight that would be crushing becomes bearable when it’s spread over ten or twenty shoulders. When it’s spread over a hundred shoulders it becomes featherlight. It becomes easy to overturn.