Son of the Dragon

Son of the Dragon - teaser chapter

This story begins, like all true stories do, at the end. Not the end of this tale, though. That end does not occur until many hundreds of years, and many hundreds of miles, and many hundreds of lives had all been lost. No, this tale begins with the end of another tale and with it the end of an era.

Cad Camlam was little more than a drenched and sodden field by the time that I arrived. The mud reached up to cake the calves of my breeches as I made my way through the charred and desolate trees that barred my path. The banks of the river had broken during the night, when the fighting had still raged, burgeoned as the torrents were by three full days of rainfall they had cascaded through the forest, washing all into a thick bog of ichorous mud and spilled blood.

The first of the fallen that I encountered was a man who was unfamiliar to me. In the choking much I nearly tripped over his body as it lay half buried beside a tree, his limbs coiled around its roots. Stumbling to regain my footing, my eyes fell upon the sight of the man's face, his aged features and close-cropped beard flecked with grey. His collarbone had almost been heft clean in two, and the emblem upon his chest plate was foreign to me. Standing, I considered if he had been a banner man for one of our own, perhaps one of Gawain's lot. But more than likely, he was in the employ of Mordred.

I spat. Three days that the battle had raged for, and there was no way of knowing as of yet how many of my friends had met their death. I wondered if Mordred had numbered among them, wondered if he would even have taken to the battlefield as was his duty. Had I been here, I thought, had I only been here.

My anger at Mordred was unjust, I knew. It was merely a reflection of my anger at myself. Somewhere within the depths of the forest, a raven's cry beckoned. I left the body and trudged on, wading through the mud, with each step calling the name of my liege and hoping only to hear a reply.

I blamed myself, of course. Having served with all that I could and having pledged my life to my king. In the wars that had come before, we had brought the disparate realms of England together. We had quashed all who stood before us, quelling traitors from within and rivals from without. But it was my own failure that haunted me the most. In the months before I had returned to these shores, the rivalry that had grown between my liege and Sir Lancelot had grown to blows. Tasked as I was with bringing peace with our fallen brother, I had failed in my duty. Despite having met with Lancelot many a time since he had left England, each time striving him, pleading with him, it was in the end all for naught. It was my failure to negotiate a peace that had led Arthur to journey south to besiege his former knight. And, in doing so, left the throne to his son, to Mordred.

This war, I thought, was my failing. But as time would attest, it was not my only failing, and by the judgement of God certainly not my worst.

I found Arthur by the shore of the river. The moon was already high, although the sun had yet to dip behind the horizon, and the sky sat in a twilight that left my feeling as though I were talking through a waking dream.

Kneeling by my king's side, he seemed to awake from his stupor. He turned his head, his breath catching on his lips. "Did you do it?" he asked. "Did you throw the sword into the lake as I commanded?"

Since I was but a young man, serving Arthur had been my dream. On the cusp of my twentieth year, he had knighted me and bequeathed to me my place at the table. I was not the youngest to do so, and the years that had passed had not been kind to me. Age weighed heavier on my shoulders than the loose armour that groaned against my joints. "I did, my liege" I whispered.

Arthur looked up at me. His eyes were smeared with mud, his hair matted into thick ropes and dampened by the rainfall until his once crimson mane was little but a grimy mess. He strained, struggling to lift himself, but the weight of his torn armour weighed him down and he collapsed weakly against the bough of the tree. "You speak the truth this time, Bedwyr?" he asked.