Everyone ignored him.
“You say that magic carpet is real, right?” Galahad gestured to the hideous piece of woven fabric the Mouse held, the gun steady on the Crooked Man’s crooked face. “Well, I’m still in the market for a magic carpet, so I’m willing to buy it from you.” He paused for dramatic effect. “…Or I could just shoot you all and take it.”
The Man, the Cat, and the Mouse stared at Galahad, weighing his resolve.
“Bear in mind, I really don’t want to kill you. That would mean he wins.” Galahad nodded over to Trystan. “As much as I want to sleep with the guy, he can be kind of arrogant. Have you noticed that? You must’ve noticed that. How could you miss it?” The knight flashed him another aggrieved look.
Trystan arched a brow in reply.
Galahad turned back to his would-be assassins. “Anyway, I don’t feel like listening to ‘I told you so’s for the next hundred miles, if you all wind up dead.” He went on. “So, I’m open to reasonable offers, here.”
The crooked trio must have found the “Trystan’s an arrogant prick, so let’s prove him wrong” argument compelling, because they conferred for a beat about the price of the rug.
Galahad waited patiently.
“Sixty gold pieces.” The Crooked Cat finally decided. “We’ll call it even for sixty gold pieces.” The other two nodded in agreement.
“Forty.” Galahad offered.
“Fifty,” said the Cat.
Galahad grinned victoriously and lowered the useless gun. “Deal.”
Trystan shook his head. “That is still twice what the carpet is worth, knight.”
“Yeah, but they lost their crooked house.” He apparently felt sorry about their self-imposed misfortune, despite his annoyance at them. “We really should help them out.”
Trystan had never before met such a soft-hearted lunatic. “How do you plan to pay for the rug?” He asked, even though there was only one answer.
“I plan to rob you.” Galahad told him blithely. “I have the gun of the most famous highwaywoman in Lyonesse, after all.” His eyes were now bright with humor.
Trystan’s insides gave a strange and pleasant twist. Few people ever wanted to share a joke with him. Gryphons were generally born without emotions, after all.
“If you want my gold, you’ll have to steal it yourself.” Trystan decided, going along with this stupidity for no real reason. “I told you before, I don’t like giving my belongings away at gunpoint. Especially the point of that gun.”
Galahad tilted his head, considering his options. “You could just toss it to me.”
“No.” Trystan crooked a finger at him. “Come and take it.”
Galahad moved over to him, wary but enjoying this game that had sprung up. “I’ll pay you back, you know.” Trystan wasn’t standing up, so he crouched down in front of him and Trystan’s whole body tightened in response. “I swear.” His hand went down to the money pouch at Trystan’s waist.
“I thought you squandered all your funds on unicorns.”
“Well, I happen to have a treasure map. That should help.”
“Knowing you, finding piles of gold would end up costing us money.”
Galahad leaned closer, lowering his voice. “Well, let’s negotiate, then. You can have whatever you want, Trys.” He very slowly drew the sack of gold from Trystan’s belt, dragging it free so the weight of it pressed against some very interesting spots. “You know that.”
Trystan’s jaw tightened, desire burning through him. “Teasing me is a bad idea, knight.”
“I told you, I have some Badness in me.” Galahad grinned. “Sometimes I feel it.”
“Right now, I ‘feel’ it, too.” All over his body.
“I’m not teasing you, though.” The knight’s palm brushed against Trystan’s thigh and Trystan’s eyes flickered shut in throbbing desire. “I’ll let you do anything to me. Just say ‘yes’ to us having sex and it’s yours.”
The man was simply the most alluring headache ever born. “Not yet.” Trystan decided, somehow holding onto his sanity. He might be stuck on this path, but he wasn’t quite ready to run headlong down its stupid, unpredictable, hazardous surface.
Yet.
Galahad smiled, hearing the inevitability implied in the word and knowing he’d already won. How did he always seem to win? “Alright.” He tossed the stolen bag of money up and caught it with a flourish, even with his hands bound. No one should be able to do that and make it look so graceful. “I told you, I can wait.”
Trystan wasn’t sure he could. His whole body was on fire. “Go pay those morons, before I forget I’m not killing them… and you.”
Galahad flashed him another beaming grin and went back to the crooked thieves.
Trystan blew out a long breath. Gods, he really was becoming a pushover for the man. “Knight?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you want a flying carpet?”
“I promised it to Avalon, as a gift.”
Trystan had been afraid he was going to say that. The man had remembered his promise to Avi. There was little else Galahad could’ve done that would have impressed Trystan more.
Shit.
There really was no escape from this path, was there?
Chapter Nine
Battle of Legion
End of the Third Looking Glass Campaign
Like lightning on the edge of clouds, there were warnings before the final storm broke. Rumbles of danger. Flashes of violence. The Looking Glass Campaigns had flared up, again and again, for decades. An unsustainable cycle of fighting and death and hatred. It came as no surprise there would eventually be a final reckoning.
Except everyone was surprised.
Especially Galahad.
In the end, of course, most people in Camelot shrugged and sighed and justified the carnage. But most people weren’t there to witness the massacre. Galahad had been there, though, so that horrible day became a part of him. A pivotal moment seared into his memories for the rest of his life. It never really faded. The screaming and the smoke and the gryphons fearlessly lining up to face them…
And the tall August grass.
The gryphons lived in mountain villages, hidden away from the world. Their unofficial capitol was Legion, which resided in a valley between two of the tallest peaks. It was a place of peace, where the young were kept safe and the old could rest.
Surrounding Legion, inexplicably, grew the Checkered Plains. The grasses there were thick and lush and nearly endless. And checkered. No one knew why. Trained gryphons could navigate the optical illusion of symmetrical squares, finding their way when others would be hopelessly lost. They used the squares to confuse their enemies and hide their most vulnerable. Those who could not fly.
Galahad didn’t know that most of the residents were civilians. Not then. Legion was supposed to be an enemy stronghold. A city of warriors. That’s what the Yellow Boots had told Uther and he’d believed them.
Galahad had believed so much that he should have doubted.
The King’s Men arrived at Legion on horses. They were Wonderland’s elite guard, King Uther’s strongest and most loyal men. Over six hundred of the soldiers, armed with the latest weapons and a sense of righteousness. They surrounded the town and the vulnerable people within.
Galahad had been the one to find the path to Legion. Later, he’d hate himself for that. Hate that it was his hard work that had led them to the abyss. His choices that doomed them all. His blindness to reality that allowed the slaughter to happen.
When they arrived at Legion, he’d felt satisfied that he’d cornered his enemies at last. That the interminable War was nearly over. If the wooden village was not how he’d pictured a supposedly fortified city, he didn’t yet allow doubts to enter his mind. He’d still believed he was in the right.
Until that day, he’d believed in so much.
Galahad climbed down from his horse, standing in the waist-high grass and took a second to admire the beautiful vege
tation. When the strands waved in the breeze, mixing the blocks of black and white, everything became the perfect gray of a stormy sky.
Within moments, blood and fire would turn it all red.
Later, most people in Camelot would shake their heads and say it was all the gryphons’ fault. Really, they’d brought the final destruction on themselves with their backwards ways and stubborn natures. Why hadn’t they just relented in the face of overwhelming force? Why hadn’t they surrendered to the inexorable pull of civilization? Why did they fight so hard?
But most people weren’t there to see the grisly results of Camelot’s victory. Galahad had been there, though. So, he knew where the blame lay.
King Uther issued his ultimatum. He had taken the gryphon queen, Lyrssa Highstorm, prisoner several days before. Drugging her with angelycall, a mineral that incapacitated gryphons. It was the second and last time he would hold her prisoner. She watched her capitol surrounded from inside a caged wagon, her one-eyed gaze intent. Uther demanded that everyone in the town surrender. Bow before him, right in front of their queen, pledging loyalty.
The gryphon were not about to do that. Perhaps they knew Uther better than Galahad did. Maybe they knew that surrender meant death. Instead, the few warriors in Legion decided to fight. The very young and very old could not fly away. The warriors said they would hold off the King’s Men while the children and the elderly fled on foot.
None of them had ever heard of the Rath, so they had no idea what was about to be unleashed. Even if they had known of its existence, they would have chosen the same fate. The warriors would never have abandoned the weak to save themselves. It was not their way. Perhaps that was why they lost, in the end. But it was also why their honor remained, even in death. Anyone would be proud to have that action as their final story.
Without even knowing it, they upheld the Knights’ Code to their dying breaths.
A knight protects those weaker than himself.
Galahad stood on one side of the battle lines, watching the gryphons line up, shoulder-to-shoulder, on the other. He didn’t know the discussions being held within the city. The decision to protect the children and the old above all else. He just knew he’d never seen braver fighters. That he never would again. Selfless and courageous, they stood against overwhelming odds, ready to die for their cause. It was exactly the kind of action that every knight aspired to. The ideal of chivalry.
It was… beautiful.
And that was when doubt first tickled Galahad’s mind.
At the Knights’ Academy, they’d taught recruits that doubt on the battlefield meant treason. That it was the mark of cowards and idiots. Later, Galahad would wonder if that indoctrination was why he ignored the sudden feeling of apprehension that gripped him. Ignored his own instincts. His instructors had all seemed so sure.
But, those smug bastards had never stood over the bodies of dead children, knowing it was your fault their lives had been extinguished forever. Galahad had, though. So, he knew that doubt was sometimes the only thing that stood between right and wrong.
Life and death.
Despite the years of training, on that horrible day, doubt filtered through the decades of anti-gryphon propaganda he’d endured all his life. For the first time, he questioned his orders. If Legion was an enemy stronghold, why were the defenses so minimal? Why were there so few gryphons preparing to fight?
The young knight next to him was jittery, his finger moved closer to the trigger of his gun, frightened by the show of strength in their opposition. Bedivere. He was a low-ranking soldier, but Galahad knew the names of all the men under his command. The boy’s movement distracted Galahad from his momentary confusion and the moment of doubt was lost.
Galahad shoved the muzzle of Bedivere’s rifle towards the ground, preventing him from firing. “Don’t you dare.” He warned. “We’re not monsters.”
He’d believed that, then. But he’d been wrong.
The next day, in taverns throughout Camelot, everyone was drinking a bit more than usual as they watched the news come in that the gryphons’ resistance was finally annihilated. Whatever had happened up there on the Checkered Plains had to happen. Most were sure of that. It was inevitable. The gryphons’ time had come and gone. And Uther had been killed in battle, too. Surely that showed that the gryphons had been vicious to the end.
Surely the knight’s fighting had been formidable, but fair.
Perhaps the gryphons thought the same thing before the Rath began firing. Perhaps, for all their fierceness, they were a bit too trusting. Put a bit too much faith in their enemies’ honor. Like Galahad, perhaps they’d believed when they should have doubted. It was a mistake, though few of them lived to realize it.
In Camelot’s official report, issued months later, it was decided that the gryphons rushed the knights’ lines. That was why the King’s Men started shooting and the Rath was unleashed. In Galahad’s mind, the knights’ had shot first. Nervous recruits like Bedivere pulling their triggers without orders. Or maybe they’d had orders, from Perceval or one of the other lieutenants.
Or, most likely, Uther himself had issued the command.
He could never be sure, though. He hadn’t seen it happen. He definitely remembered the gryphons refused the knights ultimatum. He definitely remembered Uther’s voice screaming for the Rath. He definitely remembered the feeling of doubt that filled him and how he ignored it.
His memory of all that was crystal clear and always would be.
And mostly he remembered that one shining moment of admiring the gryphons. That was an image that didn’t fade. It stood out so clearly to him that, even as an old man, he’d be able to recall the way their feathers blew in the wind and the resolute looks in their eyes. He’d remember each and every one of them. They had been so… beautiful.
And then that moment was gone forever.
And all at once, death was upon them all.
And Galahad was lost in darkness.
Chapter Ten
Why was Galahad really banished? Do you ever think about that?
Now I’m not in the business of speculating. We’re only about facts around here, people. But maybe Galahad knew too much. Maybe he was exiled because the Powers That Be are trying to keep something secret from Good, honest folk.
Maybe Galahad was banished for trying to tell us all the truth.
Why was his testimony about Legion sealed? What are they hiding from us? I have my suspicions, that’s for sure. I think --and the evidence is there to support me-- that the King’s Men were infiltrated by radical gryphon sympathizers that day.
Again, not a conspiracy theory. This is real. I read it on the internet.
“Stopping the Savages” Podcast
Sir Dragonet of Camelot- Former Troubadour of King Uther and Host of the Program
Lyonesse Desert- Brocéliande Oasis
“Your people’s concept of virginity interests me.”
“Well, there’s a conversation starter you don’t hear every day.”
Trystan ignored Galahad’s dry comment, leaning against a palm tree. “Gryphons are not as repressed as the wingless. We enjoy sex. We don’t attach judgement to engaging in it. None of my kind would abstain from it entirely, as you have chosen to do.”
“I like men and liking men was against the rules of the Knights’ Academy. Abstaining was kind of the only choice.”
“In a school full of boys and then countless military encampments, not a single male approached you?” Trystan sounded skeptical. “No other men were pleasuring each other in these places?” He snorted. “This seems unlikely.”
Galahad sat down by the water, enjoying the shade and the sound of the river rushing past. After days in the desert heat, it was a joy to be surrounded by so much green.
He’d insisted on stopping at the oasis, which was one of Lyonesse’s most beautiful and mysterious spots. Trystan had been against the idea. Huge surprise. Travelers tended to avoid the oasis, because of its reputation for u
nstable magic.
Which was a shame, because it could have been a real tourist destination. A thick forest of bamboo and palm trees sheltered a fast-moving river. The largest waterfall in Lyonesse tumbled from the red cliffs above, tall and thin. A ribbon of turquoise in the barren desert. Sure it was ominously called “The Vale of No Return,” but it was still lovely.
Instead of enjoying the stunning landscape, though, Trystan wanted to discuss Galahad’s virginity. Why? It wasn’t that stimulating a topic.
“You have been banished from Camelot for over a year.” Stimulating or not, Trystan didn’t seem willing to let the subject drop. “If nothing else, that surely opened up some opportunities for you to select a partner, yes?”
“It’s not easy to find someone.” Galahad muttered, unenthusiastic about this whole conversation.
“It’s always been easy for me to find someone. I have found many someones.”
Gee, that was just what Galahad wanted to hear. “Congratulations.”
Trystan seemed to miss the sarcasm. “Yes, I excel at everything.” He shrugged dismissively. “But it would be even easier for you, looking as you do. I would wager it might take you all of,” he mentally calculated, “five minutes --perhaps?-- to find a willing man in any bar. Three minutes, if you smiled.”
Galahad shook his head, because that wasn’t true. “I told you, people don’t get close to me. At first, they’re usually happy to talk to me, yeah. But then I say something strange or they start to get bored. I think my personality annoys them.”
“Your personality is fine.” Trystan defended fiercely and then paused. “Once someone becomes accustomed to it. No, you choose to keep people at a distance.”
Galahad slanted him a glare. “I’ve let people in. Not sexually, but in ways that matter.”
“I count three: Gwen, Avi, and King Uther. Have I missed any?”
Galahad ignored that question, because those three names were indeed the entire list. “Look, maybe I could’ve had sex with someone by now, but…”
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