(A sample chapter from the Arthurian tale The Killing Sword.)
© 2011 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
V. The First Trial of Arms
THEN KING ARTHUR and all the Court mourned the death of the Lady of the Lake. And the King buried her richly with great honor. All his barons and knights stood about the tomb the King had made for her, and showers fell from a gray sky all that day. But on a hill apart from them, the Naked Damsel stood and looked on, and her face was a mystery beneath her black veil.
As soon as she had seen the Lady of the Lake riding to the court, the damsel had fled and hid. But when she spied that the Lady of the Lake was slain, she crept out from her hiding place and now watched with pleasure as the headless body was put in tomb.
Then Sir Lanceour approached King Arthur.
‘Sire,’ he said, ‘give me leave to ride after Balyn and to revenge the despite that he has done to your good grace.’
The King looked over the king’s son of Ireland and said, ‘Go, and do your best. I am right wroth of this Balyn. I would he were paid for the shame he did to me and to my Court.’
‘Sire, you shall soon count yourself well paid.’ And at that Sir Brisance smiled and was pleased. So Lanceour made ready to pursue Balyn. But Merlyn saluted the King, and he pointed up the hill with his staff to the Naked Damsel and said,
‘Now shall I tell you of that damsel that stands there and brought the sword into your Court. I shall tell you why she came. For she is the falsest damsel that lives.’
‘Say not so,’ the knights said, but Merlyn shook his head and scowled.
‘You defend her, for she is fair,’ he told them. ‘But I tell you, be not tempted by even the fairest of damsels, and you will prosper more. I myself will have nothing to do with women, nor ever have all my long life, not until I meet that one who will steal from me all mine arts, and besot me with her body, and entomb me alive into the bowels of the earth.’
‘If you know this thing, why can you not prevent it?’ asked the king.
‘I have that power, but also the wisdom to know that I will not use it when the fatal hour has come,’ answered Merlyn. ‘For there is not a man alive but he has at least one fair damsel who was born to betray him. And so the Damsel of the Sword was born for Balyn.
‘She has a brother, a passing good knight of prowess, and a full true man. And this damsel loved another knight and gave to him her maidenhead openly and shamelessly. And he boasted of it before her brother’s face, and so this good knight, her brother, fought with the knight who held her as his paramour, and slew him by force of his hands. When this false damsel learned about this, she went on her belly before the Lady Lille of Avalon and besought her of her help, to be avenged on her own brother.
‘And so the Lady Lille took of her this sword, that had been the sword of the knight that held the damsel to paramour, and the Lady Lille made for it the pommel, the scabbard, and the Belt of Strange Clasps as you saw. And the Lady Lille fashioned all this so that no man might pull the sword out of the sheathe unless he be one of the best knights of this realm, hard and full of prowess; and with that sword he should slay her brother.
‘This was why the damsel came unto this Court. I know all this as well as you stand before me now, and I would God she had not come unto you, for she never entered into fellowship of worship to do good, but only great harm. And that knight that won the sword, he shall be destroyed by that sword. And that is a great sadness, for there lives not today a knight of greater strength than he is, and he shall do unto you, my lord Arthur, great honor and kindness. And it is a pity, but he shall not live but a short while.’
So Merlyn told the King and his Court, and the Naked Damsel blushed like fire beneath her veil.
But meantime Lanceour armed him at all points, and dressed his shield on his shoulder and mounted upon horseback. And he took his spear in hand and rode at a great pace, as fast as his horse might bear him, and in a short while at a mountain pass he saw Balyn far above him.
‘Abide you,’ he cried in a loud voice, ‘Balyn, for you shall abide whether you want to or not. And the shield you bear shall not withstand my spear.’
When Balyn heard the noise he turned his horse about fiercely and said, ‘Fair knight, what do you want with me? Will you joust with me?’
‘Aye,’ said Lanceour, ‘it’s what I came for.’
‘Maybe it would have been better for you to have stayed at home,’ said Balyn. ‘For many a man tries to put his enemy down, and yet it often ends up he is the one to go down. From what court are you sent?’
‘I come from the Court of King Arthur that is King over all England and the Isles, and I have come to avenge the wrong you did this day to King Arthur and his Court.’
‘Well,’ said Balyn, ‘I see that I will have to fight with you, and I’m sorry to have offended the King or any of his Court. But your quarrel with me is foolish, for the lady that is dead did me grave injuries, or else I would have been as loth as any knight alive to kill a lady.’
‘Make ready,’ said Lanceour, ‘and dress you to me. For soon only one of us will be alive.’
So they rode apart and dressed their spears and shields, and then spurred their horses at each other with full speed and all the weight of their horses, their armor, and their bodies. Sir Lanceour’s spear splintered against Balyn’s shield, but Balyn’s spear tore through Sir Lanceour’s shield and was torn from his grasp. His horse bore Balyn on until turning about fiercely he drew the Sword and faced his enemy.
He saw Sir Lanceour stretched out on the ground dead. Balyn’s spear had driven through Lanceour’s body and the crop of his horse also. He had slain both the rider and his steed.
Balyn drew off his helm and wiped his face. But he heard hoofbeats coming hard upon him up the mountain, and he drew on helm again, wary of what other knights the King might send after him.
It proved no knight that rode up to him, but a fair lady on a palfrey. And this lady when she saw that Lanceour was slain, she leapt down and clutched at the corpse, and began to weep.
‘O Balyn,’ she said, ‘two bodies you have killed with one heart, and two hearts in one body, and two souls.’
And she rent her hair, unpinning it, and ripped her dress from her body, so she lay naked alongside the dead knight, kissing him and clasping him to her breast, until her mouth and her hands and her pale breasts were all bloody from his wounds. And still she would not give over, but she took his sword into her embrace, and wrapped around it arms and legs as though it had been living man.
Balyn sat stricken with this sight. ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘I am sorry for you and your loss. In truth I had no rancor against Lanceour beyond the passing anger he had put upon me.’ And Balyn went down off his horse to take the sword from her, for he saw how its sharp edge cut her flesh. But at a spring the lady set the pommel to the ground and threw herself upon it, so the blade drove through her body.
Balyn reeled back. He was ashamed that so fair a damsel had destroyed herself for the love of the man he had killed.
‘Alas,’ said Balyn, ‘how I repent of the death of this knight, if only for the love this damsel bore him. Surely there was true love between these two.’
And for sorrow he went back to his horse and turned it, so the horse stood between Balyn and the bodies. Well he knew that no lady had ever loved him so well that she would have riven herself at his loss. And for an hour even his stern face softened, and his hard heart doubted.
Was it for this that I made my great oath to you, you Devils of the deep earth? Is this how you fulfill our pact? Is this lady’s blood the great deed you bring me?
From out of a great forest that lapped the skirts of the mountain a rider climbed the mountain. ‘What fresh sadness and pain will this encounter bring me?’ asked Balyn. But when the rider was near, then Balyn saw his arms, and knew it was his own brother Balan.
On the mountainside the brothers put off their helms and embraced and wept to see each other again, for joy and pity both.
‘I didn’t look to meet you here on the road,’ said Balan. ‘I am right glad of your deliverance out of prison. A man told me in the Castle of the Four Stones that you had won your freedom at last, and that he had seen you in the Court of King Arthur. So I rode hither into this country on the way to Camelot. But what strange adventure do I find here?’
Balyn then told his brother Balan of the Naked Damsel, of the Sword, and of the death of the Lady of the Lake. ‘And King Arthur was displeased with me, so that he sent this knight after me that lies there, dead. His lady love slew herself for his loss, and her death grieves me sorely.’
‘So it does me,’ said Balan. ‘But you must take the adventure that God ordains to you. I can think of more than one damsel that is faithless and lewd, and were better to have been spitted upon that blade instead of this true heart.’
‘Well,’ said Balyn, ‘also I am unhappy that my lord Arthur is angry with me, for he is the most worshipful knight that reigns now on earth. And his love I will get or else I will die in the attempt. King Ryons threatens war, and I am resolved to go with all speed to prove my worship and prowess upon him. And then if I live I will seek out the Naked Damsel and help her win her vengeance against the foul knight that wronged her, God willing. And maybe this sword will lead me to help her, for it has a goodly strong witchcraft worked into it, as is plain from the sight of it.’
‘I pray God you do,’ said Balan. ‘For it is a blessed thing for any knight to help women. I will go with you,’ he said, ‘and we will help each other turn and turn about, as brothers ought to do.’
