Simon Hawke - The Wizard of Camelot 1 - The Wizard of Camelot

Simon Hawke - The Wizard of Camelot.htmTHE WIZARD OF CAMELOT

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas Malory was born and educated in London, served as a decorated career

soldier in the army, participating in most of the Internal Pacification

Campaigns during the Collapse, and retired with the rank of sergeant-major.

Upon

retirement, he joined New Scotland Yard's elite London Urban Assault

Division,

since disbanded. He left the police force to work with Merlin Ambrosius in

founding the International Center for Thaumaturgical Studies, which

eventually

grew into the International Thaumaturgical Commission, and he still holds an

honorary seat on its board.

Though he never became an adept himself, he is widely regarded as the

co-founder

of the Second Thaumaturgic Age, and played a key role in developing the

administrative programs of the I.T.C., chairing its first regulatory

committee

and presiding over its first adept certification programs. Best known as

Merlin's closest friend and trusted advisor, Malory is regarded as the

leading

authority on Professor Ambrosius, and is currently engaged in writing the

definitive work on his life, Merlin, The Man Behind The Myth. He lives with

his

wife, Jenny, and his thaumagene familiar, Victor, in Geneva, Switzerland.

CHAPTER 1

My name is Thomas Malory, and I was there when magic came back into the world.

I

was there right from the very start, when the Second Thaumaturgic Age began.

It

began with one, single, desperate act born of fury and frustration. It began

with one blow of an axe. And that axe was mine.

For most of my adult life up to that time, I had served in the armed forces

of

His Majesty, and I had retired with the rank of sergeant-major in the

infantry.

I had lived the simple life of a soldier. It was often a hard life, but these

days I find myself wishing I could return, if not to the type of life I led

then, at least to the obscurity that I enjoyed. I've gained the status of

celebrity in my advanced years, however reluctantly, and fame is truly

something

I could easily have done without.

There was once another Malory, Sir Thomas Malory, who wrote Le Morte

d'Arthur.

However, he was no relation and, in those days, I was unaware of the fateful

irony involved in my bearing the same name as his. I was unaware of a great

many

things back in those days, those dark, terrible days. I was unaware of the

influence fate wields in people's lives. I never really thought about such

things back then. There were more immediate, far more pressing matters to

occupy

all my attention, matters pertaining to survival.

In the army, I had served with the L.U.A.D., which stood for London Urban

Assault Division. It was a rather dramatic name, but quite appropriate, all

things considered. I saw a great deal of action in my time with the Loo, as

we

called it, during the International Pacification Campaigns. The word "loo" is

British slang for toilet or, as the Americans might say, the "crapper." And

that, too, was appropriate, in its own way.

I'd put in over twenty years with the service and I was approaching my

fortieth

birthday. I had a wife, Jenny, and two small children; Christine, aged

eleven,

and Michelle, aged nine, and I wanted nothing quite so much as to find a safe

and reasonably peaceful haven for them. In those dark days of the Collapse,

"reasonably peaceful" was about as much as anyone could hope for. And, for

many

people, it was a hope never to be realized.

London was a war zone that erupted into full-scale mass street riots on the

average of several times a year The army was frequently called in to quell

them.

These domestic police actions, taking place in various large British cities,

became known as the Internal Pacification Campaigns. They occurred with such

frequency that the major ones were simply referred to by number, in a rather

Yank-like military shorthand, such as In-Pac 9, which erupted in London,

In-Pac

10, which broke out in Coventry, and so forth. The minor campaigns occurred

so

often that no one even bothered counting them.

I had seen a good number of my mates go down in those campaigns and I'd had

about enough.

I wanted out.

I moved my family to Loughborough, in the Midlands, approximately one hundred

miles north of London, near Nottingham. It was not exactly a small town, but

it

was a fair distance from London, which was the point of the whole thing. The

level of crime and violence in London had become intolerable and I feared for

my

family's safety.

I purchased a house, a small cottage, really, on the outskirts of the town,

but

nevertheless, it came quite dearly and wiped out all my savings. There was,

of

course, no possibility of financing the purchase with a mortgage. No one was

taking any flyers on such things back then. Businesses were failing left and

right, banks and underwriting firms among them, and credit was a nonexistent

thing. One paid with cash or one simply didn't buy at all, and with the

economy

collapsing, prices fluctuated wildly, not only from day to day, but from hour

to

hour

Things grew worse with each passing week, nor was the madness confined to

British soil. The Collapse was a worldwide phenomenon, as everyone knows now,

though few people living today have any firsthand knowledge of what it was

really like. That period has since been greatly romanticized in films,

novels,

and on television, but it's one thing to see the Collapse fancifully depicted

in

a film or television series and quite another to have actually lived through

it.

Modern generations seem to have a great feeling of nostalgia for the past,

somehow perceiving that period as a time of great adventure and derring-do,

but

at the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon, I must say frankly that young

people today have absolutely no idea what those days were really like. They

simply haven't got a clue.

The Collapse was a bloody nightmare. The most densely populated urban areas

were

hit the hardest, and those were the places where the violence was the most

pronounced. I had wanted to remove my family from the environs of the city at

all costs, and so I bought the house in Loughborough, spending all the money

I

had carefully saved over the years. In retrospect, I still don't think it was

a

bad decision, considering the circumstances. Cash was at a premium and

everyone

was liquidating everything they owned in the way of long-term investments,

fighting for the short-term gain.

The Collapse had changed people's ways of thinking. Money was steadily losing

value, and so such things as homes, savings, and investments were losing

their

value, as well. Sellers were anxious to get as much as they possibly could,

but

with no one offering any financing, cash had to be the bottom line, and so

prices fell dramatically. Unfortunately, the value of what I'd saved had

fallen

dramatically, as well. With financial institutions failing left and right, I

was

lucky to have pulled out my money when I had and to have spent it while it

was

still worth something. At least we had a home. We had precious little else.

The problem, once I had my family settled in our new home, was how to afford

its

upkeep. On the plus side of the ledger, we owned it, free and clear, and we

didn't have to worry about such things as taxes and insurance. No one was

writing any policies, because the insurance industry had collapsed, and no

one

was paying any taxes, because the beleaguered government had lost practically

all ability to enforce collection, save for such built-in revenues as sales

taxes, which had risen alarmingly as a consequence. In short, the government

was

quickly going broke. In the meantime, what budget there was went to support

essential services such as hospitals and fire departments, the military and

the

police, and so forth. Since the most densely populated urban centers were the

greatest drain on these limited resources, the outlying areas had to go

begging

and were largely left to fend for themselves.

This meant that if our house burned down, or was vandalized or burgled,

neither

it nor our few possessions could be replaced. Food was becoming more and more

expensive, and with constant power outages, rapidly diminishing supplies of

heating oil, and the scarcity of gas, we were forced to rely on wood or coal

for

fuel. The price of coal had skyrocketed, and the price of cord wood was

rising

rapidly, as well. The petroleum reserves had been almost entirely depleted,

and

what petrol was available was rationed among essential government, medical,

police, and military personnel.

It seemed pointless to bemoan the policies that had brought about such a

disastrous state of affairs, because environmentalists and scientists had

been

predicting it for years and we had no one but ourselves to blame. Toward the

end, people had started to wake up at last, and serious attempts were made to

practice conservation and responsible resource management, but it was simply

too

little, too late. The time had come to pay the piper Everything was going to

hell in a handbasket in a hurry.

I had managed to remove my family from London, but to support them, I had to

return to the city myself. There were damn few jobs around for anyone, and

what

work was available paid very little and was often done for barter. Thanks to

my

military background, I was fortunate to find employment with the Metropolitan

Police Department or, as it was and is more commonly known, New Scotland

Yard.

They were woefully understaffed considering the job they had to do, and the

pay

wasn't much, but it was still a great deal more than what most other people

had.

Given the distance between Loughborough and London, as well as the price and

rationing of what little petrol reserves were left, there was no possibility

of

commuting every day. While the rail lines still ran somewhat sporadically,

half

the time the trains were stalled, or else the tracks were torn up by angry

citizens, wanting to strike back at the government in any way they could, all

of

which meant I couldn't spend much time with Jenny and the girls. During the

week, I lived in London, in a grimy, bug-infested, little flat, the cheapest

I

could find, and weekends, as often as I could, I went to see my family. The

strain of separation was severe on all of us, but there was simply nothing

else

to do. Somehow, I told them, I would eventually find a way to work it out.

Surely, things couldn't keep on growing worse. Yet, day by day, they did.

Most people never realize how fragile a thing a city truly was in those days,

how little it took to disrupt its equilibrium. A sanitation strike would have

the refuse piling up in mountains within only a few days, bringing out the

rats

and giving them a place to breed, and creating an eye-watering miasma of

decay

that hung over the city like a poison cloud. A power blackout would bring a

city

to a standstill, turning people into feral, looting beasts that preyed on one

another in the darkness. A labor action disrupting the delivery of food and

supplies would cause shortages and price gouging, and an oil crisis, whether

genuine or artificially induced by profiteers, would result in a shortage of

petrol at the pumps, traffic tied up by cars waiting in long lines, and

tempers

flaring dangerously. All these things and more had happened in the past, and

yet

each time such an event occurred, people had simply settled back into their

usual routines as soon as it had passed and continued to take everything for

granted, as before. And that was how we got into the mess now known as the

Collapse.

It wasn't something that happened overnight, of course. Like a snowball

rolling

down a mountain slope, it had started slowly, growing and gathering momentum

as

it went, until it turned into an avalanche that swept over everything in its

path. The warning signs had been present for years, only they had been

largely

ignored. Even when things began to fall apart, people chose not to believe

it.

One is tempted to lay the blame on governments and multinational

corporations,

but the fact, is that the people, all the people, ultimately shared

responsibility, because we should have been the ones to stop it.

There were those who saw it coming, to be sure, who had seen it coming for

decades, and their numbers had grown considerably in the years immediately

prior

to the Collapse, but unfortunately, they were still not numerous enough to

make

a difference. They had tried to do something and had failed, and their

failure

had led to anger and frustration, which in turn had led to desperation, which

had led to eco-terrorism. That had been merely the first hint of the violence

that would come. My generation had grown up with it, and by the time I'd

reached

my teens, the avalanche was well and truly underway and no one could do

anything

to stop it.

It is with some amusement that I regard the London bobbies these days, with

their return to the traditions of the pre-Collapse period, and their rather

quaint, nostalgically styled uniforms, for in my days with New Scotland Yard,

we

looked less like policemen than like SAS commandos in full battle dress. We

carried not billy clubs and whistles, but fully automatic weapons, and our

uniforms were not blue serge, but molded gray fatigues that were known as

"urban

camo." Our riot helmets made us resemble some outlandish cross between

motorcyclists and astronauts and they were the only way to differentiate us

from

the military troops, aside from the word "POLICE" stenciled across our backs

in

large, black letters.

And, oh, how I despised those bloody helmets! The army knew better man to be

saddled with such a worthless piece of junk. I longed for the simple metal

helmet I had worn when I was in the army, but some idiot bureaucrat had

apparently decided that the riot helmets were not only highly functional,

which

was debatable, but that their polarized visors had some sort of intimidating,

psychological effect, which was a joke. In any event, only the greenest

rookies

used the visors, and not for very long, at that. Most of us simply tore them

off, and many of the hardcore, swaggering, old veterans simply dispensed with

the helmets altogether. Having seen as much, if not more, action as any of

the

veteran police officers, I kept my helmet, hot and sweaty as it was, because

I'd

seen more than my share of head wounds and I had a family to think of. I did

hack off my visor; however; because I couldn't see well enough to shoot worth

a

damn with the bloody thing in place. And, sad to say, police officers expended

a

great many bullets in those days.

There is a popular program on television presently called Collapse Cops,

depicting a team of police officers (a male and female, of course) "fighting

crime during the dark days of the Collapse." There is a great deal of gunplay

and camaraderie, coupled with sexual innuendo (the beauteous Officer Storm

somehow contrives to be caught in her bra and panties at least once every

episode), the villainous perpetrators are all uniformly malevolent, and each

program ends with our heroes managing to touch the lives of several citizens

and

make their burdens easier to bean I only wish it had been so.

There were, naturally, women on the police force and in the military, but I

never encountered any who were even remotely like the leggy, pouty-lipped Ms.

Storm. The women with whom I served were all serious professionals and there

was

not a tube of lipstick or an eyebrow pencil to be found among them. Glamor

was

the very least of their concerns and romance between fellow officers was

rare.

Given the situation in the streets, I did not know of a single officer;

either

male or female, who would risk the complications of a romantic entanglement

on

the job. As to the malevolent perpetrators and the citizens whose lives we

touched, I only wish that, in reality, the lines had been so clearly drawn. I

can best illustrate with an example, one that stands out in my mind as

vividly

as if it had happened only yesterday, for it was the proverbial straw that

finally broke the camel's back.

We were called upon to suppress a sniper. The term "suppress' ' was a

euphemism

for killing the poor bastard, because with the high level of violence in the

streets, there was neither the time nor the manpower to engage in the luxury

of

negotiation, even if hostages were being held, which was quite often the

case.

Possession of firearms of any sort was strictly illegal, of course, but it was

a

law that had become completely unenforceable. The demand for firearms had

become

so great among the general populace that a thriving black market existed to

supply them and no sooner would we shut down one basement machine-shop

operation

than a dozen others would spring up. If a citizen were apprehended using a

firearm in a situation that was clearly self-defense, the usual procedure was

simply to confiscate the weapon and let the poor devil go and seek to buy

himself another at a ludicrously inflated price. However; a sniper was

something

else again.

By the time we arrived on the scene, a large number of shots had already been

fired. Fortunately, no one had been killed or injured yet, which seemed only

a

matter of either dumb luck or lousy marksmanship. In fact, it turned out to

be

superior marksmanship, something of which I have no doubt, for the fire that

was

subsequently directed at us came uncomfortably close, but avoided hitting

anyone. No one can come so consistently close while still avoiding a direct

hit

without being a very good shot, indeed. However, when we first arrived, we

did

not know that, nor would it have made a difference if we had. Our orders for

suppression were specific.

The streets in the vicinity were empty Everyone had prudently fled the scene

the

moment the sniper opened up, but we followed procedure and cordoned off the

area, as well as making announcements over the bullhorn that everyone should

stay inside and avoid coming near the windows. As per procedure, the sniper

was

given one chance and one chance only to give up his weapon and surrender, and

when his answer came in a burst of automatic fire, we proceeded to deploy for

suppression.

It was an old and all too well-practiced drill. The sniper had stationed

himself

in a front fiat on the fourth floor of a building in a residential section of

the East Side. We stationed marksmen on the rooftops of the opposing

buildings,

and on the ground as well, taking cover behind our vehicles. Our main concern

was to make certain no innocent lives were lost, but situations of this sort

had

become so commonplace that the building's residents had all evacuated the

premises within moments after the sniper opened up, exiting at the rear of

the

building through the basement corridors without incident. After checking to

make

certain none of the flats in the immediate vicinity of the sniper were still

occupied, we proceeded with the drill to take him out.

We moved cautiously, but quickly. Within moments, we had a squad inside the

building. My partner and I were with that squad. My partner, Sergeant

Royceton,

was a hard-nosed veteran with twenty years experience on the force. A tough

old

bird, Ian Royceton could chew ten-penny nails and spit them out as tacks. We

moved up the stairwell to the fourth floor and carefully proceeded down the

corridor, toward the sniper's flat, moving from doorway to doorway and

providing

cover for each other as we went. Outside, our fellow officers were laying

down

some covering fire to occupy the sniper's attention and, hopefully, divert

him

from our approach.

We had fully expected to find that he had barricaded himself inside, and as a

result, we had brought along a battering ram and some tear gas bombs. To our

surprise, we discovered the door was not only unlocked, but open. It actually

stood ajar We stood so close, outside in the corridor, that from within, we

could hear the sniper firing his weapon and the periodic dropping of empty

magazines to the floor Royceton and I glanced at one another and no words

needed

to be said. We knew exactly what to do. We would wait until the next empty

magazine dropped and burst in on him while he was in the process of reloading.

It went off like clockwork. The next time we heard the metallic clatter of.

an

empty magazine falling to the floor, I kicked the door fully open and both

Royceton and I went in shooting. The poor devil never had a chance. Our

bullets

stitched into him and he jerked convulsively, then fell back through the

shattered window glass and down four floors into the street, where his

broken,

lifeless body lay bleeding on the sidewalk. A quick and efficient operation,

and

I breathed a sigh of relief that it was over and that we'd escaped unscathed.

Then I heard Royceton's sharp intake of breath and he said, "Oh, my God." I

turned quickly, my weapon ready, but it was not a threat he was reacting to.

I followed his gaze and, through the open bedroom doorway, I saw the bodies

lying on the bed, upon the blood-soaked sheets. On the night-stand beside the

bed, we found the heartbreaking note that he had left. I have since tried to

forget that note, and though the years have blurred the memory, so that I can

no

longer recall his exact words, the substance of his last message to the world

is

with me still, and there is no forgetting it.

He was not, apparently, a well-educated man, and that was reflected in the

poor

syntax of his suicide note, for in effect, it was exactly that. His tone was

simple and despondent, deeply woeful, and in a mad sort of way, it even

sounded

reasonable. He began by addressing us, the police, his executioners. He

started

off with an apology. He stated that it was not his intention to hurt anyone,

a

remark that was diabolically incongruous with the corpses on the bed, and

that

he hoped no policemen or innocent bystanders had been harmed by any of his

bullets.

"I will try my level best," he wrote—or words to that effect—"to avoid

hitting

anyone," and he went on to say that if, by accident, someone was killed or

wounded, that he did not mean it and was truly, deeply sorry.

I listened as Royceton read the words out loud to me and I recall how stunned

and mystified I felt at the crippled logic the sniper's twisted mind

displayed.

Here, he had murdered his entire family, and as he had written the note,

possibly with their freshly slain bodies on the bed behind him, he stated his

sincere intention to avoid hurting anyone and apologized profusely in the

event

he had. It seemed, however; that he did not consider what he'd done to them

to

be an act of murder; but an act of mercy, of release from a life that had

become

unbearable.

I stared at their bodies as Royceton continued to read from the note, and

even

tough-as-nails Royceton, hardened, seasoned veteran of two decades of street

combat, could not stop his voice from breaking. There lay the sniper's wife

and

his two young daughters, about the same age as my own. He gave their names. I

still recall them. Suzanne, his wife, and daughters Barbara and Irene. He

wrote

about their desperate plight, so similar to that of all too many others. They

were cold and hungry, and he could find no work that would allow him to

provide

for them.

His wife was ill and bedridden, though the illness was not specified, and his

eldest daughter; Barbara, had begun to prostitute herself for food. She was

thirteen. He had been out, searching unsuccessfully for work, having been

given

notice of eviction if he could not come up with the delinquent rent by

morning,

and he had returned to find his wife and children arguing. Irene wanted to do

her part to help and join her sister on the streets. Irene was nine.

What occurred afterward was something we would never know, for he began to

relate what happened, then broke off, ending with one more apology, this time

to

God, and then he signed his name, James Whitby, in large and bold,

flourishing

script, as if with his final signature, he had tried to impart some

importance

and dignity to his name.

His actions were not, of course, those of a sane man. The poor devil's mind

had

snapped. It was possible he was unstable to begin with, but there was also

the

haunting possibility that he had been as sane as any one of us and that, in

his

last extremity, his reason simply had fled. The most curious thing was that

he

had told us virtually nothing of himself. He was, and would remain, a cipher

He had signed his name, in big, bold letters, and yet he had said nothing

about

who and what he was. He had made no personal statement. He had died as he had

lived, merely another average, insignificant little man whom one would never

notice on the street, a man who, one might infer, held no pretensions, but

cared

about his family and did whatever he was able to get by. And when all his

best

efforts came to nought, and he saw his family suffering in result, his wife

sick, one daughter degraded and the baby of the family wanting to degrade

herself as well to make up for Daddy's shortcomings ... Well, he apparently

broke down and decided death was preferable for all of them, a release from a

life that was no longer worm living.

I remember Royceton dropped the note down on the bed, not intentionally, he

had

simply let go of it, and it fluttered onto the bloody chest of little Irene.

Royceton shut his eyes and turned away, then murmured, "You know, I can

almost

understand the poor sod."

It was at that moment that I reached the turning point. Complete and total

burnout. I went numb. I had absolutely nothing left. My memory won't serve as

to

what, exactly, happened at that point. I seem to recall taking off my helmet

and

dropping it to the floor. I may have given my assault rifle to one of the

others, I simply don't remember; but I know that I no longer had it several

hours later; when I was on the train to Loughborough. I recall only one thing

clearly, and that was a driving urge to get back to my family and be with

them.

I felt an urgency mere words cannot convey I simply wanted to get back and

hold

my wife and daughters in my arms and never let them go.

Hie train broke down a short way out from Loughborough and I got out with the

rest of the passengers and walked the remainder of the way. I do not recall

how

long it took. It seemed like hours, plodding along the tracks, and it was

raining. Not a hard, driving rain, but a steady drizzle, yet by the time I

reached our home, I was soaked through to the skin and shivering. Jenny heard

the front door open and came running out to greet me. Our daughters were

asleep,

and she had been in bed with them, yet she was all bundled up, as were they,

tucked beneath the blankets in their warmest clothes. They'd been burning

wood

for heat. It was all we could afford, and Jenny had run out. There was no

money

for getting any more. They had already burned some of the furniture and I,

simple fool that I was, had left behind what little money I had left in

London.

Jenny saw the look on my face and tried to tell me that it didn't matter. She

was glad to have me home, and wouldn't the girls be happy when they woke up

to

see their daddy had returned, but all I could see as I looked down at their

sleeping forms, huddled close together, were the bullet-riddled corpses of

Barbara and Irene. It was as if an ice-cold fist had grabbed my guts and

started

squeezing. I left the bedroom and went out to get my axe.

Jenny grew alarmed when she saw what I intended. Chopping wood without a

permit

was a criminal offense. She tried to stop me, but I ignored her protests and

went out, determined that come what may, my girls would never share the fate

of

poor James Whitby's daughters.

Not far from where we lived was a protected natural preserve, all that

Simon Hawke - The Wizard of Camelot 1 - The Wizard of Camelot

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