Merlin’s father carry the Stone inside the smithy. Using two leather aprons, they placed it upon the great anvil.
Natalenya ran over to a workbench and pulled the bar from underneath it. She placed the bar in Merlin’s hands, but he hesitated. “You should go,” he said. “It’s not safe.”
Natalenya turned to face him, and the flickering light from the newly lit forge reflected off her cheeks and forehead. “I’m not leaving you.”
Outside, the yelling of men could be heard in the distance.
He dropped the bar into place, and her hand found his and squeezed.
“Merlin!” his father called. “We need your help holding up the Stone. Natalenya, keep watch through the crack between the doors.”
Merlin found his way over to the anvil and grabbed the corners of the leather apron from his father. He could feel the heat of the Stone before him, and from deep within he heard a rumbling. His father set a chisel on top and smashed his hammer down upon it.
Clank!
And again.
Clishink!
Ten more times Owain drove the chisel into the Stone, each blow becoming wilder than the last. Merlin knew his father’s strength and expected chips of rock to fly, but nothing happened.
“Is it breaking, Tas?”
“No!”
“There are torches outside,” Natalenya called. “They’ve come. I can see druidow and lots of warriors. Even the villagers.”
The Stone flared up with a bright blue flame, and Dybris yelled.
Merlin backed up as the burning tentacles of fire pulled at his fingers.
Owain threw the chisel down and took up his biggest hammer. He waited for the flames to die down and then smashed down with all his strength.
Crack!
Once more.
Cracsh!
Again and again his father’s iron-forged arms tried to split the Druid Stone asunder, but the sound of the hammer blows did not change, and Merlin could tell that the Stone hadn’t fractured.
His father gasped. “It’s not breaking!”
The wood of the doors groaned and then splintered.
“They’re trying to smash in,” Natalenya yelled.
Owain called to Dybris, “Take this sword. Everyone else push benches against the doors. If they break in, we’re outnumbered ten to one.”
Garth ran up the stony path toward the fortress with all the speed he could muster. His empty stomach groaned, and his lungs burned like the bundle of three ember-tipped branches he held. But up he climbed without fail, passing Tregeagle’s shadowed house, until he arrived at the first ring of the old earthworks. There he sat behind a boulder to rest a bit, keeping the branches lit by fanning them.
“ ‘Never let your fellow sailor down’, me father’d say, an’ he’d be happy I was helpin’.”
Far to the west, lightning ripped the heavens.
“Better do this before it rains!”
Garth stood and faced the fortress, whose staved wooden walls seemed to soar into the night sky. Studying the top of the walls and tower, he couldn’t see anyone on lookout. He listened, and the multitude of horses neighed as before. He bent over — hopefully unseen — and snuck around the outside of the wall to the right, where the ground was higher.
Now where did I see that huge pile o’ hay inside the fortress? He thought back to the time when Merlin had taken him to the tower for a tour. Before he’d borrowed the wagon … well, stolen it, to be truthful. If only he had done right back then.
Ah, he remembered where the hay was. Inside the wall, right up against the timber-built tower! Finding a high spot near a bush, Garth held the branches close together upside down and blew them to flame. He closed his eyes and uttered his first prayer in a long while.
Scrunching up his nose, he threw the first branch over the fortress wall. The second branch went wide, hit the wall, and fell. The third went over like the first. Garth scampered to the one that fell, backed up, and lobbed it over.
Then he ran back down the hillside as fast as he could without tripping in the dark.
Bedwir stood next to two other warriors, and at Vortigern’s orders, they slammed their shoulders into the doors for the tenth time. At first the doors had moved and cracked, but now something heavy halted their momentum.
“What about the other door?” Vortipor asked his father.
“Eeh, these double doors look weaker. Grab the tree trunk, you softies!” Vortigern roared. “We’ll get that Stone or you’ll break your backs.”
Bedwir looked at Vortigern in confusion. Get the Stone? Uther had commanded it destroyed. And why had Vortigern forced them to make this mad chase after calling off the