No Ordinary Men – Part V
Believe me, I never intended a five-part story. Yet as I revisited this one, and the accompanying excerpt from Stephen Lawhead’s Arthur, Book Three of the Pendragon Cycle, I fought between succinctness and necessity.
Necessity won, so here’s the last installment of this series No Ordinary Men, with a final note at the end.
In truth, I believe he had been listening for it most of the day and was beginning to wonder why he had not heard it.
He stood, holding out his hand for silence, his head cocked to one side. Neither I nor anyone else heard anything but the thin, trilling call of the pipit, or mountain lark, as they winged to their nests for the night.
Though I knew better than to doubt him, it began to appear as if her were mistaken. The men grew restless, “It was only—” began Ectorius.
Merlin rose, and held up a silencing hand. He stood rock-still for a long moment and then turned toward the mountain. A slow smile spread across his face. “Behold!” he said. “The conquerers return!”
Ectorius jumped up. “Where? I do not see them!”
“They are coming.”
Ectorius ran forward a few steps. “I do not see them!”
Then the shout came again. I heard it: the high, wavering “halloo” one uses in the mountains. The others were on their feet now, too—all of us straining eyes and ears into the gathering gloom.
“It is them!” cried Ectorius. “They are coming back!”
We did not see them until they were very close indeed, for in the dusk their clothing did not show against the darkening mountainside. When they shouted again, I made out the two forms hastening toward us.
“Cai! Aruthr!” cried Ectorius.
In a moment they appeared, and I shall never forget the expression on their faces. For I had never seen such triumph and exultation in a human countenance before—and have seen it only once since. They were bone-weary, disheveled, ablaze with the light of victory. They were heroes. They were gods.
They staggered to the campfire and collapsed on the ground. Even in the firelight I could see their sunburnt cheeks and noses; Arthur’s fair skin was peeling, and Cai’s neck and brow were as red as his hair! Their clothes were dirty—torn and ragged at knees and elbows. Their hands were raw, and their were bruises, scrapes, and scratches on their arms and legs. They appeared to have passed through walls of hawthorn and thickets of thistle along the way.
“Get them something to drink!” ordered Ectorius, and someone hurried off to fetch the beer. The lord of Caer Edyn stared at his sone, pride swelling his chest till he looked like a strutting grouse.
I gathered food from our supper and gave it to them. Arthur took the bread and stuffed half the loaf into his mouth; Cai, too tired to eat, simply held it in his hand and stared at it.
“Here,” said Merlin, handing them a waterskin, “drink this.”
Cai drank, swallowing great mouthfuls at a time, and then handed the skin to Arthur, who gulped the cool stream water in noisy draughts.
Ectorius could contain himself no longer. “Well, how did you fare, son? Did you reach the top.”
“The top,” replied Cai reverently. “We reached the top, we did.” He turned his face to Arthur, and his eyes held the look of a man who has learned a profound and life-changing truth. “I would never have made it but for Arthur.”
Arthur lowered his waterskin. “Never say it, brother. We climbed it together—you and I together.” He turned to the rest of us standing over him. “It was wonderful! Glorious! You should have been there, Myrddin—Pelleas!—you should have come with us. You can see from one end of the world to the other! It was—it was…wonderful.” He lapsed into silence, at a loss for words.
“You said it was impossible,” Cai reminded Merlin. “You said no one had ever done it. Well, we did it! We climbed it all the way to the top!” He paused and added softly, turning once more to Arthur, “…He all but carried me.”
-Arthur, Book Three of the Pendragon Cycle, by Stephen Lawhead
That story is, without rival, the most potent telling of young kingmaking I have ever come across. I read it for the first time in 1989. And I do mean kingmaking. Because that’s what I intend for my sons: to see to it that I abdicate to no other man the work of setting my boys’ hearts in the direction of becoming men. Inside and out. That story is, among other things, very much the inside-out.
This last part is very much the outside-in: I just returned from delivering Alpha Male and four of his buddies into the hands of the only man I trust to undertake the job. That is, Alpha Male and his four friends have begun a level of physical training to which few can rise. And with the only man I ever have and probably ever would train with, save one other. But they’re young bucks, full of life, bonhomie, and no shortage of bravado. They did very well, trash talk and all, all the way home.
Perfect. And right on schedule. They have no idea what’s coming.
We’re going to take them to a place physically and mentally that will deliver them to a space within themselves where the Deep Questions get asked. We’re going to take them there on purpose. And then we’re going to see what they have to say for themselves when they discover what they’re really made of.
This is no ordinary work.
But, again, we’re not about making ordinary men.
