The Knight With Two Swords

by Edward M. Erdelac

  Lamorak pried Lot’s hands from around Balin’s wrist and parted them.

  Balin straightened.

  “Unhand me, Lamorak!” he snapped, not liking the rough way the son of Pellinore had forced him.

  “Go your own way, Sir Balin, and peace to you,” said Lamorak, holding up his hands. “Only let my father and I deal with King Lot.”

  “I never said I would not,” Balin began, but then movement caught his eye, and he saw his brother Brulen only a few feet away, engaged in combat with a Saxon captain wielding a two-handed axe.

  He spared a hard look at Lamorak, then hurried to aid Brulen.

  By the time he reached his brother, however, the Saxon had been dispatched. Brulen leaned exhausted on the pommel of his sword, still sticking in the axeman’s belly.

  “The Knight with The Two Swords,” Brulen chuckled. “You still live.”

  Balin sheathed one of his swords and put his hand on Brulen’s shoulder, past exhaustion himself.

  “I may yet collapse in this field and sleep.”

  “I will sleep beside you, brother,” Brulen said. “Is this over yet?”

  Balin turned and looked about.

  The clash of arms was noticeably lessened. The combined force of Uriens, Pellinore, and Leodegrance were more than a match for Rience, Lot, and their Saxons. He saw hundreds of the latter throwing down their swords and shields, axes and bows, and being directed to sit like scolded children amid a guard of knights.

  Then a long, unmistakable howl rang out over the field.

  Balin’s heart stopped as he saw a dozen Saxons stealing unnoticed through the broken gates.

  He pointed them out to Brulen.

  “Bent on murder-revenge, or stealing what they can before they sneak away,” Brulen muttered.

  “Princess Guinevere is still inside,” Balin whispered.

  Brulen looked about for a horse and spied Ironprow himself, grazing nearby.

  “Isn’t that your horse?”

  ***

  The two of them tore at their armor, flinging down their gauntlets and kicking off their greaves, shedding steel and harness until they were stripped to their doublets.

  Balin whistled as he approached the horse, for fear it would bolt, but it looked up at him and trotted over like a faithful hound.

  “One more task, my friend,” he whispered, then pulled himself up into the saddle and reached out to Brulen.

  Brulen swung on behind and gripped his waist. They tore across the field at speed for the city.

  ***

  It seemed an eternity before they reached the ruined gates, and still he spurred Ironprow cruelly on, the sight of the dead Carhaix watchmen lying within gnawing at his heart.

  The brothers galloped through the empty city, not stopping the winded, heaving horse until they were at the keep.

  The eastern postern was blocked by heavy carts.

  They rushed to the stair and found the door to the keep broken off its hinges, the doorway glutted with bodies, but they breathed relief when they appeared to be uniformly Saxon.

  Balin saw Purades and Tor then, and in front of them all, standing proud with her bloodied spear, Guinevere in her hauberk, her cross dangling outside. At her side, the gray wolf that was Sir Marrok panted, his muzzle dripping fresh blood.

  Balin and Brulen both fell to their hands and knees in prostrate exhaustion.

  “Bring water!” Guinevere called to the women behind her and exchanged her weapon for a bulging skin.

  She genuflected between them and gave them cool drink, first Balin, then Brulen.

  “How goes the battle?” she asked, when they’d drunk and thanked her.

  “My lady!” called a familiar voice from down in the street.

  Balin looked to see Arthur, leaning in Hengroen’s saddle, smiling through grit and blood up at her.

  “King Rience’s own beard will complete the trim of his mantle now,” said Arthur.

  Guinevere went between Balin and Brulen and came down the keep steps, going gingerly over the dead Saxons, then running when the way was clear.

  Arthur got down from his horse and the two embraced, even pressing lips hard to each other in a decidedly uncouth display that made Balin blush and Brulen smile thinly.

  Balin looked away and saw a familiar pied raven preening itself on a barrelhead near the blocked entry to the escape tunnel.

  Merlin!

  Clattering up the street came King Leodegrance, King Pellinore, King Uriens, and several knights. Sir Gawaine, Balin noticed, had the great sword of Rience, Marmyadose, across his saddle.

  “My daughter is safe?” Leodegrance demanded in his booming voice, before he saw the princess in Arthur’s arms and broke into a winning grin.

  “Leodegrance!” Arthur called, in high spirits. “By what miracle do you come? We thought you detained at Daneblaise in the north! And you, Pellinore. What of Chief Cheldric?”

  “Cheldric’s boats were swallowed in a sea storm,” said Merlin, who was now sitting on the barrel where the raven had been.

  “And Uriens rode out of the woods outside Daneblaise and trounced Baldulf. Then Merlin bid us ride back into the forest, saying you had need of us,” said Leodegrance. “When we emerged, it was here.”

  “The same wizardry brought us,” said Pellinore.

  “I am glad I didn’t listen to old Cleodalis and institute more civic improvements. That stand of old trees would have been felled at the beginning of the year.” Leodegrance laughed heartily.

  Arthur parted from Guinevere long enough to clasp Merlin’s shoulder. The display made the wizard look uncomfortable.

  “Thank you, Merlin,” Arthur said.

  “You are not entirely out of the woods, as it were,” said Merlin, disengaging Arthur’s hand. “Osla Big Knife is neither among the prisoners nor the dead.”

  “Yet all his lieutenants are accounted for,” said Uriens, “and his army is gone.”

  “He will sail for home and return with another, be assured,” Merlin said.

  “That will wait for another day,” said Arthur, returning to Guinevere’s arms. “The rebellion at least is over.”

  “Peace!” Pellinore trumpeted, raising his fists, and the men cheered.

  “Let the people know!” Leodegrance called to the serving women peering anxiously from the doorway of the keep. “Our city is safe. And when the dead are buried, and the blood scoured from the streets, when the last remnant of the war is cleansed, then I shall bring my daughter to Camelot, with the Round Table of Uther.”

  More cheering.

  The children came streaming down the steps of the keep, waving kerchiefs and twigs and whatever they could lay their hands on to dance around Arthur and Guinevere. Balin’s aching smile slipped as he saw Brulen inching away alone, his countenance dark and heavy.

  Balin pushed his way through the crowd, past the kings, who were now passing a flagon of red wine between them and past the knights and soldiers who were raucously clashing each other’s armor and singing conflicting songs.

  He finally caught up with Brulen at the smashed gates, leaning against a pillar away from the noise and press.

  “Where are you going, Brulen?” he called, when he reached him.

  “Truly, I know not, my brother,” said Brulen. Balin could see something in the lines of his brother’s face, as though they had been scored deeper by some great troubling thing.

  “Won’t you stay? Return with me to Camelot and await the coming of the Table. Do you remember the tales of the wondrous sieges Claellus used to tell us?”

  “I remember,” Brulen said, smiling faintly, “and I’m sure your name will be there in gold.”

  “Maybe yours too,” Balin said hopefully. And why not? What other knight approached him in skill, if he was the greatest?

  “I will not sit at any table of Arthur’s,” Brulen said, looking off into the distance.

  “Why?” Balin insisted, striking Brulen’s chest with the back of his fist. �
�Will you not tell me the ill you perceive in him?”

  Brulen’s face hardened, and he pointed.

  “Look for yourself, brother,” he said through his teeth. “Look as I told you and mark it.”

  Balin looked.

  The prisoners were being escorted into Carhaix now, hemmed by guards.

  Rience was driven first in clinking chains, stripped of his beard-trimmed mantle and armor, his empty scabbard at his side an inglorious reminder of his defeat. He hung his head and met no man’s eye as he passed.

  Behind him, his defeated warriors bore their dead leaders on makeshift biers of shields and crossed spear-hafts. The Saxons held aloft their slain chiefs, and Balin saw Sir Segurant’s body carried on the shoulders of the Snowdonian knights, his own solemn head resting upon his breastplate, hands over his ears as though to shut out the cheers of the victorious.

  Behind him came the soldiers of Orkney. Alone among all the other prisoners, they wept and wailed with unseemly abandon. There were not enough knights left to bear their burden, so common soldiers shared it alongside bleeding noblemen.

  It was King Lot of Orkney, his face pale white, his arms crossed over his chest, like a martyred saint carried aloft by ecstatic adorants.

  Balin crossed himself as the sorrowful procession passed. He was too stricken to say or do anything else.

  When he turned to speak to Brulen, to demand some explanation, or perhaps to haltingly make one himself, his brother was gone.

  His heart sank in his chest, but he pounded one mailed fist against the stone wall and resolved to find Pellinore and Lamorak and demand answers.

  He had done no more than stomp around the corner, pushing through reveling commoners, when two armored men barred his way.

  Gawaine and Gaheris stood before him, glowering, and their swords were drawn.

  Balin took a step back, and a gauntlet reached from behind and clapped over his hand when he touched the pommel of his sword.

  Agravaine leaned forward and hissed like a viper in his ear. “Draw, and die, you damned villain!”

  “Why did you kill him, Balin?” Gawaine growled, as heedless of the celebrants capering around them as the peasants were of the barely controlled violence straining like chained hounds between the four knights. “Why did you kill our father?”

  “I didn’t,” Balin said.

  “Liar!” Gaheris yelled, trembling.

  Gawaine angled his sword in front of his younger brother, to stay off bloodshed for the moment.

  “Sir Lamorak said he saw our father offer up his sword to you, and you cut him down,” said Gawaine.

  Balin’s fist clenched so hard at his side the steel of his gauntlet creaked.

  “Lamorak is false.” Balin growled. “He and King Pellinore came to me on the field when I bested Lot and demanded to take charge of him. I swear by all the saints and prophets…by my very soul…I left your father in good health.”

  Gawaine stared hard at him, and Gaheris looked to his elder brother as though awaiting the order to kill.

  Balin eased his hand out from under Agravaine’s and let it hang easy at his side.

  “Take my swords,” Balin said. “And let’s go together to Pellinore and Lamorak. Let me prove my word.”

  Agravaine whisked Balin’s sword free of its scabbard, but when he tried to jerk the Adventurous Sword loose, he found he could not draw it.

  “You can’t draw it. Permit me,” said Balin.

  He felt the prick of Agravaine’s sword point at the side of his neck.

  “Move wrong and I’ll butcher you here,” Agravaine promised.

  Balin grasped the hilt in reverse and drew the magic sword easily. He dropped it in the street.

  Gawaine lowered his sword and motioned for Agravaine to do the same.

  Gaheris hesitated but let his own guard down.

  “You don’t believe him?” Agravaine exclaimed, aghast at his brother.

  “Let us see what Pellinore says,” said Gawaine. “And Lamorak.”

  He turned to go and Agravaine shoved Balin after.

  Gaheris hesitated and stooped to retrieve the Adventurous Sword from the street.

  “Leave it,” said Balin. “It will be there when I return.”

  “Return!” Agravaine scoffed.

  They stalked purposefully through the increasing crowd of revelers, until Geraint and Marrok came out of the press at them, tankards brimming and sloshing ale on the flags.

  “Where are you going looking so serious?” Geraint slurred. “Come, let’s find a barrel for you to lighten your expressions!”

  “Where are Lamorak and Pellinore?” Gawaine demanded.

  “Gone,” said Marrok.

  “Gone where?” Balin asked.

  “Back to the Outer Isles,” said Marrok.

  “They’re missing the party,” Geraint said regretfully.

  “When did they depart?” Gawaine asked.

  “You can’t catch them. Merlin’s taken them through the woods by magic. Pellinore wanted to prepare his country’s defenses in case Osla’s ships should double back and think to take it undefended.”

  “Come and show us how pagans drink!” Geraint said, spilling some of his drink across Gawaine’s feet.

  Gawaine shoved him away into Marrok’s arms, and Gaheris took his elder brother by the arms.

  Marrok, sensing something wrong, drew the drunken Geraint away before he could regain his senses and escalate the situation to a brawl.

  “Brothers,” said Agravaine, from behind Balin. “Let us show these Christians how pagans fight.”

  “What purpose would that serve?” Gaheris snapped.

  “Shut up, you little pup!” Agravaine barked back. “It’s obvious they meant to kill father all along. Pellinore and Lamorak charged this assassin with slaying him, as he slew our Lady of The Lake.”

  “I didn’t kill King Lot!” Balin insisted.

  “You confess to killing the Lady!”

  “I would not kill a man who surrendered to me,” Balin argued.

  “But you’d slay a defenseless woman? What sense does that make?” Agravaine chuckled ruefully.

  Gawaine grasped his own head and turned in place, closing his eyes and thinking.

  “Why would he charge Pellinore and Lamorak with the crime if he were under their orders?”

  “To give himself an alibi, that we do not slay him for a villain!” Agravaine countered. “He knew they were returning to the Outer Isles and would not be here to defend themselves. This man is as much an enemy of Avalon as our dear father was its friend.”

  “I agree that Pellinore’s departure was convenient, brother,” said Gaheris. “But for Pellinore. That tyrant’s dislike of Orkney is well known, and Lamorak has ever been the wolf in sheep’s clothing their priests so rail against.”

  Gawaine opened his eyes and looked at Balin, coming to a decision.

  “We should slay this murderer, Gawaine,” Agravaine said.

  “Let’s take our case to Arthur,” Gaheris pleaded.

  Gawaine ignored them both.

  “Take your swords, Balin,” he said. “If ever it comes to light that you slew our father, you will have need of them.”

  “We’re letting him go?” Agravaine exclaimed.

  “We should at least take him before Arthur!” Gaheris said.

  “So he may be locked away in a dungeon again?” Gawaine said. “If he is guilty, then I want him out in the world, where I can cross steel with him. Do as I say.”

  Balin nodded to Gawaine as Agravaine released him and held out his sword.

  Gawaine only turned and pulled Gaheris along with him.

  Balin took his sword, but Agravaine held it for a moment, glaring into his eyes, before he let it go.

  “Even the best knight in the world falls eventually,” said Agravaine.

  He went off after his brothers.

  Balin wondered again where Brulen had gone.

  Second Part:

  The Dolorous
Stroke

  CHAPTER ONE

  Three days after the siege of Carhaix, which became known as the Battle of The Copse, the long funeral procession of King Lot of Orkney arrived at Camelot, where his youngest sons, Gareth and Mordred, and his daughter, Soredamor, awaited with their mother, Queen Morgause. The old Queen of Norgales was there, too, and King Uriens’ wife, Queen Morgan La Fey.

  There was something in those three austere and aloof queens that made Balin shiver. Garbed in sable mourning clothes and faceless beneath night black veils, they stood arm in arm before the great Black Cross in front of St. Stephen The Protomartyr’s, inscrutable in aspect and silent and still as ancient monoliths. Morgause was heavy with the last scion of Lot, and somehow the matronly swell of her belly made her all the more imposing and phantasmagorical, as though she were some dread progenitress of darkness, a malevolent and willful Pandora, or a mysterious Nyx, in whose womb God had somehow stuffed up the primordial denizens of antediluvian chaos. Why Balin had these ill feelings toward Lot’s widow, he did not understand. She was one of King Arthur’s half-sisters by the late Igraine of Tintagel. Family.

  Of Arthur’s other sister, Morgan La Fey, Balin knew very little, only rumors he had heard from Matthew and Safir during his imprisonment. He knew that she had been a student of the Merlin, and that she had left his tutelage for greater, deeper instruction from the Queen of Norgales.

  The Queen of Norgales, it was said, had courted the Devil and King Rience for power and protection, respectively, after Sir Aglovale and the knights of Pellinore had slain her wicked husband, King Agrippe. Agrippe had been a vile persecutor of Christians, the worst since Agrestes. He had invaded the kingdom of Pellinore’s brother, King Pellam of Lystenoyse, Matthew said, because the Devil himself had tasked him to do so for the promise of absolute rule over Albion. Safir had told Balin the Queen rivaled even the maidens of Avalon in knowledge of the magic arts, yet stood in opposition to them.

  No one knew her given name. Matthew had said she’d hidden it from the world, so that no man, angel, or demon could have power over her.

  But for all his dread of these three terrible queens, Balin felt only pity for Lot’s orphaned daughter, Soredamor, a flush faced girl of thirteen, eyes red from crying, her red hair bound away in black barbette and black fillette like a young nun. Gareth, too, only fourteen, cried openly at the sight of his father’s covered corpse, borne stoically by his elder brothers Gaheris, Gawaine, and Agravaine, as well as Arthur himself, and King Uriens. As for Mordred, he was no more than a pudgy babe clutching his mother’s skirt and stuffing his own fist into his mouth. He would never know his own father.