“Again, it’s a long story.”
“Well mine is not so long. After I defeated the felon, I returned to the cave, but you had already gone. So I kept looking.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I followed your tracks. You killed whoever that was and left with a woman.”
“Ah,” he said, “yes, well she was just an unfortunate inhabitant of a nearby village. I took her there before returning to the cave to find you.”
“And where’s Pegasus?” she said, crossing her arms.
“Lost during the fight. I tried to call for him, but he didn’t return. I had hoped I might find him here with you.”
She regarded him. Perhaps that made sense. She had lost his tracks not long after leaving the forest, once the land grew more desolate. Perhaps George had turned and brought the woman he’d rescued to a nearby village Una had somehow missed. It even made sense that he had gone back to look for her. Where else would he look but the last place she had been? Though it was odd that he’d lost Pegasus and she’d seen no sign of the horse.
“And I suppose you came here, knowing you would eventually find me on the path to Castle Silene.”
“Indeed, yes,” he said, though he still looked uncomfortable. Maybe it was the armor. Which, on that note…
“How did you find the armor?”
“I’m sorry?” he leaned forward as though he hadn’t heard.
“Your armor, where did you find it?”
“I...I always have my armor,” he said, furrowing his brow as if confused.
Suddenly, Una felt like reaching for her knife. She looked at the Lion by her side who had not stopped growling. Was this really the George she knew, or was the forest playing tricks on her? She had heard there were imps and fae who would temp you off the path, drawing you to their lairs where they would eat you. Children’s stories of course, but perhaps they were based in truth.
She held his gaze for a moment, considering. His face had gone slack for a moment, as though he were listening for something, though there was no sound in the trees. Finally, he looked at her with a face of dawning enlightenment. “Oh, I see what you mean. You’re referring to the mule that carried this armor before.”
“Which remained with me,” she added.
“Well I found the mule on my way here,” he said. “Nearly dead I’m afraid. Fell down a ditch and broke its legs. I put it out of its misery but took what I could carry.”
“Alright,” said Una, weighing the man’s words. That was too bad for the mule. She’d liked that beast, but the knight’s story did seem to make some sense. “Just tell me one thing, then.”
“What is that?”
“When you first came to visit me in Londinium. What did I tell you about Castle Silene?”
He frowned at her. “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything…”
“Tell me,” she said, her hand lowering to where she kept her knife.
He looked at her, and a tense moment passed between them. “You told me nothing,” he said after a pause. “You said you knew as much about that castle as the next girl.”
Una’s muscles relaxed. It had to be him. Only the jailor had been in a position to overhear the conversation, and it was unlikely that such specific news had traveled all this way.
Unless whatever magical forces that resided in the Forest of Arden could read her mind.
The thought was not one that comforted her much. But as she relaxed and agreed for the Knight to fall into step beside her, she recognized his gait and casual swagger. If he was a hallucination, it was a good one. He even left footprints in his wake and offered her some cracked nuts to chew on after some additional traveling together.
She nibbled on the nuts, hesitant at first. A part of her still wondered if he was not what he seemed. But the nuts weren’t poisoned. She figured that out rather quickly. Most poisons were easy to identify, and since she had grown up as the daughter of a noble family, her mother had taught her to recognize most of their distinct tastes. The nuts were fine. Besides, most poisons were better distributed in wine or cider, something to cover up their usually pungent taste.
As she chewed on George’s food, she began to feel more at ease. The food was definitely solid, and he gave all indications of being a real human being, not some sort of apparition. Though he did remain quiet, more than she would have expected.
And honestly, what was she thinking? It was the Red Cross knight, plain as day. She had let rumors of the forests drive away her sense. George was here, he was back. And there was nothing else that he could be.
And yet…
“When I first entered the forest,” she said aloud after they had continued traveling for several hours. George cocked his armored head in her direction. His visor was down now, which was odd in a dark place like this, but to each their own. “I heard voices in the trees.”
A pause, then, “The forests do hold strange secrets,” replied the knight.
Huh, she was suspecting a more incredulous response. “You’re not going to ask me what they said?”
“I assumed you would give it to me anyway,” said George, though his tone sounded almost...annoyed.
“Alright mister ‘I wear my helmet even when it’s dark,’ the voices did say something to me.” She side eyed him as they walked. Just why did he wear that helmet while they were walking. It seemed rather strange. “The voices told me to beware of a person named Duessa.”
Did the knight tense at hearing that name?
“Duessa,” said George carefully. “Yes, I know the name.”
“You do?” Una asked, surprised to hear the knight confirm anything. “The voices told me that you were blinded by her, that she was leading you down crooked paths.”
For the first time since they’d met up again, George laughed. It was not the cheery laughter she had heard from him before. This laugh was emotionless, almost cold.
“It figures you would hear something like that in this place,” said the Red Cross knight. “The Faerie Queen is not fond of Duessa.”
Una narrowed her eyes. “Are they enemies?”
“Duessa was wronged by the Faerie Queen in the past. She was once chosen to be the guardian of these woods, and what they protect. But Gloriana wanted that power for herself. She pushed Duessa aside, forced her into the very realm she was born to keep sealed.”
“I’m sorry, Gloriana is…?”
“The Faerie Queen. Gloriana is the name she goes by, though what her birth name was, we may never know.”
“How have you learned all of this?” Una furrowed her brow. “You didn’t know anything about the Faerie Queen before, other than the fact she sent you a vision, and was as beautiful as Aphrodite.”
George said nothing. Hang it all, she really wished she could see within that mask and read his expression.
“I have learned much since we parted,” he said at last. “Suffice it to say, Duessa is not the enemy.”
“But the voices…”
“You would trust strange voices over me?” He asked, turning his face plate towards her. “If what I say is true, the Faerie Queen would want to place doubt in your heart, to give you something that would seem to villainize someone like Duessa, to make you doubt me.”
Una went silent. There was some truth to that. It wasn’t like she trusted strange whispers in the forest or this Faerie Queen either. But there were conflicting stories here, and she didn’t like it.
“Tell me more about this Duessa?” she asked. “I assume you’ve met, given what you’ve told me. What kind of woman is she?”
The knight stared forward. “She is the most beautiful woman in the world.”
Okay. A weird way to start out. But typical. Why is it that men focused so much on the outward beauty of a person? Una, who was unfortunately cursed with more than her share of good looks, knew just how annoying that could be. In fact, it had been slightly refreshing that the knight had treated her like a normal person for once. Other than that time when he had tried
to touch her hand. It seemed even he could not get past her beauty, though apparently, he had forgotten about her with the appearance of this Duessa. And if that’s what he wanted then she would be okay with it. Maybe.
“I mean,” Una elaborated. “What does she do? Where did she come from, and why is she important to our quest? Can she help us defeat the dragon?”
George paused for a long time, long enough that she began to wonder if that giant helmet of his impaired his hearing. But eventually he said, “No, that is not her way. She wishes only to take her rightful place as the guardian of the Otherworld.”
“The Otherworld?”
“Where Duessa was, until recently, banished. She managed to break free recently and re-enter our world. The Faerie Queen’s strength is weakening.”
“You speak of the Faerie Queen as if she is the enemy.”
“She is,” he confirmed with a nod.
“But your vision of her?”
“A ploy, like the voices you heard in the trees, a way of luring me to her side. Why do you think this forest is widely regarded as cursed? Because the Faerie Queen resides here, and shirks her duties. This place could have been a paradise under its intended leadership, a Garden of Eden, and yet it is now little more than a trap for men and beasts. Duessa explained it all to me.”
“Did she now?” Una mused. She held no trust of the Faerie Queen, if she even believed that such a personage existed. But the story George told her now reeked of deception. Not the knight’s of course. She trusted him well enough to know that he would not openly try to lie to her. He probably couldn’t even do it, from the way he wore his emotions on his sleeve, or used to. Something did seem different now.
Whoever this Duessa was, Una would trust her no more or less than the Faerie Queen until she knew more. Whatever was going on, there was more to it than met the eye. And with George’s statement that Duessa would not help with the dragon, Una had no reason to concern herself with Duessa’s petty leadership squabbles.
That’s what bothered her the most about George’s story, how much he cared about the wrongs supposedly inflicted by the Faerie Queen. So what if Duessa was wronged in the past? Life was not fair, and it did no good to moan about past grievances. All you could do was pick yourself up and move forward.
Something else bothered her though. If George indeed no longer trusted the vision given him by the Faerie Queen, then why was he still following Una to Castle Silene?
16
That final thought bothered her for the next day as they traveled through the forest. She got little sleep that night, thanks to the chorus of strange noises that came from all sides. She could have sworn there were eyes in the darkness, watching her. And it didn’t help that George said almost nothing after their last conversation.
That night she had a strange dream. She dreamt that she was sitting on a hill, overlooking all of Britain. Then there was a great earthquake, the mountains moved, and the face of the land changed. A great rift opened up in the earth, and out of the rift came fire and many shadowy figures.
One great shadow, a great beast like the dragon she knew, but dark and with multiple heads, emerged from the rift and began covering the land with its flames. Many fought against it, but they all failed. There was even a great leader, covered in golden armor and wielding a sword that gleamed in the sun, who led a hundred and fifty knights and many armies of the land against the great shadow. Yet they all failed.
The figure grew, consuming all the land until it became as large as the great islands themselves. Only Una was left, sitting upon her hill. The beast saw her then, it approached her. She tried to move, but the air was thick and heavy. She could not remove herself from that place.
The darkness unraveled around the monster, and she saw that its heads were not those of a dragon but were human. And in their faces she saw...herself.
She recoiled, trying to pull back from those faces, attached to serpentine necks. One of them opened its mouth, and an odd sound emerged. At first, Una thought it was the ticking of a clock, but it grew louder and she realized it was something else. It was the sound of hooves on hard earth.
She awoke with a sharp intake of breath. It had been a long time since she’d had any sort of nightmare, at least not one that didn’t involve her memories of Castle Silene. It had to be this accursed forest.
It was only then that she realized that the sound of hooves had not ceased when she woke. They were still there, growing louder, and coming from ahead of them, further down the road. Someone was coming.
She silently rose to her feet. Both she and George must have been sleeping for some time, for the fire had gone out, and not even the embers were lit. The sky above the canopy was partially lit, which meant the sun was out. But she could still see very little in the faint light. Yet the clip clop of an approaching horse still drifted down the road.
“George,” she said in a harsh whisper. “George, get up.”
The man lay on the ground opposite the fire pit, looking strangely small for a man still dressed in his armor. It was still odd that he elected to keep all that heavy and chafing plate on his back. But he had insisted that the forest was so full of threats, he had to be prepared at any moment. Thankfully they’d encountered no such threats since they arrived. Hopefully the oncoming horse carried a traveler like themselves, heading in the opposite direction, rather than a demon of the forest.
“What is it?” George said, his armor clinking as he rose to one knee.
“Someone is coming,” she whispered.
Her knight listened carefully, before rising to his feet and looking this way and that, as though unsure what to do, or where the sound was coming from. “There aren’t supposed to be travelers on this road.”
“People come through here,” she said, confused. “It’s certainly not the safest road to travel but no better or worse than going around.”
That did not seem to make him any happier. He pulled out his sword and raised his shield, holding both at the ready. Una also withdrew her knife and the pair of them waited to see what would emerge from farther up the road.
At last, a form emerged from around a bend in the trees. In the faint light, Una could make out a black horse, upon which rode a man covered in some kind of strange armor. It was not plate or leather. Instead, it seemed almost to glitter in what light came through the canopy. Chain mail, maybe?
“Stop where you are,” said George in an oddly shaky voice. Una spared a confused glance for the knight. She knew George lacked a little in confidence, but he wasn’t a coward in a fight, if it came to that. What scared him?
The newcomer pulled his horse to a halt, regarding them silently.
“State your business,” said George, brandishing his sword and shield, “and you won’t be harmed.”
“What are such people as you doing in a place like this?” said the man. He had an accent that Una couldn’t place, which was new for her. She thought she’d heard just about every accent from her time at home, hosting foreign dignitaries, not to mention her time in Londinium. She’d spent most of her days in a cell, but she could still hear out her window. She’d listened in on conversations from every conceivable nationality. Yet this man’s voice was new to her. He definitely wasn’t a Briton or a Saxon, or even a Roman.
“We’re just traveling through,” she said, putting her hand on George’s shoulder. He was definitely overreacting. Chances were, this fellow was simply traveling like they were, taking the most direct approach through the forest.
“I had a vision,” said the man, not changing his tone, nor even looking at Una. He kept his gaze fixed on George in his armor. “A vision of a man, killing my brother.”
His voice was ice, and Una finally realized what the man was wearing. He wasn’t wearing mail. The glittering surface she saw along his torso was made up of beads. As if to confirm her suspicions, the man raised a hand to pull a bandana over his mouth. He looked exactly like the man George had killed near that oak tree, before
he had run away with the woman he rescued.
George must have recognized him too, but surprisingly, he continued to stare at the newcomer with a mixture of confusion and apprehension. “I’m afraid we can’t help you, sir. If it’s vengeance you want, you will not find help here. We are en route on another quest.”
“Are you indeed,” said the man, his voice growing steadily colder. “That cross on your shield…”
“What of it?”
“It is the same symbol born by the man who murdered my brother and took my lady away.”
“It...lots of knights bear crosses on their shields.” Una could almost hear George’s armor rattle as he began to quiver in fear. That wasn’t like George at all. Sure, he had some confidence issues, but he never backed down from a threat like this.
“Maybe there’s a misunderstanding,” she said, putting her arms out to try and calm everyone down. “Let’s just all take a deep breath…”
“I will deal with you later, pretty,” said the man. He swung himself off his horse. The sound of metal scraping against metal, and the man pulled forth a curved sword, just like that of his brother. And on his circular shield were written the words: Sans Loy. Lawless.
Una took a step back. This was looking to turn into a fight, and she always did what she could to remove herself from such situations.
It was only then that she noticed, where was Lion?
“Now, come now, there’s no need for violence,” said the knight.
“You killed my brother, and carried off my mistress Duessa,” said the man, his voice was raised now, and the words rushed out of him like a dam bursting. Wait, did he say the woman had been Duessa?
“I...I am also a servant of Duessa,” said George.
“Then where is she?!” bellowed the lawless man.
“She...she…” the Red Cross knight seemed at a loss for words.
There was something odd about this whole situation. First of all, George had told her that the woman he rescued was just a local village girl, not Duessa. Why had he lied? And secondly, why was he so scared of this man? He had faced the brother before and won, so why shouldn’t this be the same? He had even bested the first man without plate armor, which meant he had an even greater advantage now.
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