Gunyon burst out of the waters and bludgeoned Nimue with a wild swing, catching her in the temple. They plunged back into the water, Gunyon’s hands seeking out her neck and squeezing. Nimue sucked in a throatful of water before her air was cut off. She scratched at his bare arms. Where was the sword? Her back hit the rocks of the pond floor, raising another cloud of mud. There was a terrible ringing in her ears. She dug her nails into the paladin’s cheeks and eyes, but his grip only tightened. Her mind filled with flashes of white, and in between the flashes she saw images: tears of blood streaming down lean cheeks . . . Arthur naked and curled up asleep like a babe, surrounded by candles . . . a white owl, impaled by an arrow, flailing in the snow . . . a blue glade, every leaf moving, every leaf a wing, the glade alive, pulsing . . . a sea of banners flapping in a cold wind, their crest a mighty boar’s head . . . a ribbon of silver entwining two women’s hands . . . the sun turned black and blinding . . . a grassy mound of tilting gravestones rising up, spilling clods of dirt, something underneath, older than time, something terrible . . . a beautiful little girl with green antlers . . .
Nimue felt herself falling into the white void in her mind, giving over to a dream sleep, when rough hands grabbed her arms and yanked her forward. She inhaled another mouthful of pond water as the cold air hit her cheeks. Arthur dragged her through the pond and flopped her onto the gravel shore, where she vomited. A second later he was on top of her, screaming, though her ears throbbed and she could not make out the words. He shook her, and she coughed up more water. Somehow that brought back her hearing.
“—want to die? Is that what you want? Is it?”
“Yes!” Nimue croaked, slapping at Arthur and shoving him off. She curled over onto her hands and knees and sobbed as she retched on the gravel.
Arthur unbuckled his sword belt and flung his dagger in its sheath at her feet. “Then finish it! And let me be done with you!”
Nimue fell onto her stomach and wept against the cold rocks. Arthur swayed in the breeze, scowling, but did not leave. Instead he sat on the shore, stuffed his shaking hands beneath his armpits, and stared in disbelief at the pond, now a deep red with paladin blood, robes floating like jellyfish on the surface.
Suddenly Nimue slapped at the gravel around her. “The sword. The sword!” Arthur was too exhausted to answer. Nimue crawled into the water, keeping her chin above the blood. She dog-paddled, pushing bodies away until she spied an emerald glint. She dove down and retrieved the Sword of Power.
FOURTEEN
ARTHUR SAT AGAINST A BOULDER and watched Nimue throw one of the paladins’ saddlebags onto the shore. She sat cross-legged and began to rummage through it.
He bit off a hunk of stale biscuit left over from the ambushed caravan. Every instinct told him to run, to leave the madwoman to her inevitable fate. Yet his eyes drifted to the handkerchief in his right hand, its edges embroidered with purple flowers, the rest brown with old bloodstains. The handkerchief was his mother’s, but the blood was his father’s. It was the handkerchief that bade him stay.
Tor, son of Cawden, was a restless figure in Arthur’s life, an unsteady earner who would vanish for months at a time on grand quests, leaving his wife and children to tend their meager farm in Cardiff. Typically, his father would return home with nothing more than stories of treasures won and lost, of great battles and glorious jousts. He cut an ample figure, with strong appetites for wine and food, and by the time Arthur was thirteen years old, he took to wearing pieces of armor he’d collected through the years and calling himself Sir Tor. He claimed that he’d been knighted during a siege against English invaders in Gwent.
After one journey in particular, Arthur noted a change in his father. His lies were bolder, his stories even more fantastical, and his hands were full of tremors. He took to a chair in the local tavern, the Nag’s Head, a bent-over little pub constructed from the timbers of local shipwrecks. His father proclaimed himself the protector of the village and drank wine every day from morning until Arthur’s mother, Eleanor, collected him well past the high moon.
For all his many flaws, Arthur still loved his father. He loved his stories of crusading knights and monstrous flying lizards, ghost ships and bloody duels. He knew the local men laughed at Tor. Arthur’s knuckles were always scraped, defending his father from the japes and insults of the older boys.
Small children adored Sir Tor, and he was gentle and kind to them. In their wide eyes, Sir Tor was indeed the mighty figure he claimed to be. He also had a beautiful, deep voice and could sing. And by Arthur’s sixteenth year, his father had become a local institution, a knight errant, scribing his adventures to song, settling into the comfortable robes of a storyteller.
And so it was until the day three English knights, not much older than Arthur, rode into the village, seeking only thievery and violence, and the harsh truth of the world collided with Sir Tor’s imagined one.
Arthur was not there to protect his father that night. He was dancing with a local girl in the next village over. It wasn’t until he heard the bells and the shouts and saw strangers on horseback galloping out of town that he sensed something was wrong. By the time he returned, his father had already been carried to an upstairs room at the Nag’s Head. Arthur remembered the toppled tables of the inn, the pools of blood on the floor and on the stairs. An inconsolable barmaid explained to him that Sir Tor had stepped in when the knights grabbed her. The boys turned on Sir Tor like wolves.
Arthur thought he would break into pieces when he saw his father twisted in the bedsheets, struggling to breathe. Arthur took his large, soft hand in his own and pulled up a stool. Sir Tor was speaking quickly as though several streams of conversation were passing through his mind at the same time. He repeated the word “dogs” over and over, his eyes gradually coming into focus and seeming to see Arthur for the first time.
“What was—what was I saying? Arthur, where was I, boy? I lost my train of thought.” Sir Tor breathed unevenly as sweat dribbled down his round cheeks.
“Dogs, milord,” Arthur reminded his father as he pressed a wet cloth to Sir Tor’s forehead. The room was so quiet you could hear the flicker of the candles. Blood-soaked rags were heaped by Arthur’s feet.
“Dogs, yes, of course, keep a dog. Train him to hunt fowl and you’ll never go hungry on a long ride. I had a—but that wasn’t—there was something else. Why is it so bloody hard to think?”
“You don’t have to speak, Father.”
“But I need to, I need to. Never measure your courage by the men you’ve killed. That’s it. Sometimes true courage means avoiding the blow that will take a man’s life. Men who judge their worth by the men they’ve killed are lesser men. Those aren’t knights.”
Sir Tor grimaced as he adjusted his weight on the cot. Arthur tried not to look at his bloodied shirt.
“No, milord,” Arthur answered.
Sir Tor’s eyes fluttered; he searched the ceiling for words as his lips moved. “Keep on with the chess. It, it exercises the mind for war, and—and is a good way to meet other youngsters. You need friends, Arthur. You’re too solitary for your age. Too serious. I’ve told you this.”
“Yes, Father.”
“That’s—that’s a good boy. I don’t mean to be critical. But you’re only young once, trust me. What was I saying? What else was I . . . ? There was something I had to, um, with your, with your, with your hunting, your arrows.”