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.
This Tale
is a True Tale
from the
time of Arthur King of the Britons.
§
I got it from William
Caxton, printer, who fashioned it from the manuscript of Sir Thomas
Malory, Knight. Sir Thomas in turn had the tale from a French scribe
who penned the roman as part of the cycle of works treating of
Arthur and the Saint Grail, that most mysterious thing. The monks got
the tale from troubadours, minstrels & talesmen, whose lines
extend back in years
before any man can tell.
§
So a good
& true Tale will not die but give instruction & amusement for
as long as men shall choose to learn & tell it.
§
I. The Unknown Knight
WHEN ARTHUR, Uther Pendragon’s son, drew the Sword out of the Stone, only a few barons and knights would follow him. Most defied him, and bade him prove his claims upon their lands by force. And for years England and the Isles were rent by war.
Two men did more than all the rest to win those wars for Arthur and secure his father’s throne. One was Merlyn the Sorcerer, and he is famed throughout the world and will never be forgotten. The other was the Northumberland knight Balyn the Wild, who by strength of arms caused the death of twelve rebel kings upon a single day.
Balyn was never a knight of the Round Table. He fought and died before Arthur wedded Gueniver, before the mighty Gawain, Arthur’s sister’s-son, was knighted, and before Lancelot of the Lake became a man. And Balyn’s name is all but unknown now.
And yet it ought not to be so, for Balyn not only won Arthur his throne, but he also doomed the Fellowship of the Table to ruin and to death.
Here is how it happened.
