The Arthuriad by Francis Hagan

Author:Francis Hagan [Hagan, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Francis Hagan
Published: 2013-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

In a place which knew not the pulse and count of that god named Chronos, where the past and the future were merely different substances occupying the same space and bound up inextricably with one another, and where the present was not something to pass through but something one carried in one's heart, Arthur moved. It was a heroic trek that he was upon for he moved grimly and with set purpose towards the gargantuan mound of bodies atop which rested the beckoning light of silver. In his path waited the rank and file of the dead, clutching their notched swords and clacking their dry jaws together. He heeded them not as his own sword flailed and whirled about him like the great arms of a siege onager, hewing a path for him towards the towering mound. He would brook no interference now and he moved like a fluid statue of jet given life by the one, mad, question that burned in his brain. A question that seemed to be taken up by the staggering undead around him and whispered between their cracked lips until it seemed as though they mocked and grinned at him as he burst their powdery skulls and trampled upon their mummified chests. Who are you? they whispered, and his inability to answer fuelled the black rage in his heart and sent paroxysms of volcanic violence from his limbs.

"I am Arthur!" he cried but knew not where that name came from.

The luminance shed from the silver light crept over his face as he forced his way over valley and ridge until it limned the scars and recesses with a frosty glow. The pallor of the cadavers and dead things about him took on a new degree and he found himself slaying and knocking down feeble dummies of ice. A coldness breathed with the air and the eternal rain of blood was gradually transformed into a frozen hail of crimson pebbles which rattled from his mail corselet and bounced from the raised blade of his sword. Gritting his teeth beneath the ruby hail, Arthur hunched his head down into his massive shoulders and struggled on, his grey eyes blazing under thick brows. He was determined to reach the silver light and either die or gain the knowledge of his origin - however dark and Stygian that truth was.

Then he was at the foot of a grisly mound of dead things that rose up to a prodigious height above him. Looking up, he could see only a dizzying outline etched out against the copper sky while around him blazed a field of pulsing white.

Sheathing the gory blade, he jumped, caught hold of a rotting rib-cage that was strong beyond its appearance, and proceeded to climb relentlessly up the massive, swollen, mound while a faint echo of some distant memory muttered dusty words and images at the back of his mind. It was a long climb that lay before Arthur but he did not baulk at it for his

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