LANCE OF TRUTH (10 page)

T
o the death.
A shiver went down Rhianna’s spine. She wanted to yell at the knights for being so stupid as to have duels to the death in the first place. She hated to think what might happen to her mother if Sir Lancelot lost.

They rode along the secret road that followed the ditch, keeping out of sight of the Wall. It was badly overgrown, and thorns caught at their hair and clothes. Sir Agravaine grumbled the whole way. He kept giving Rhianna suspicious looks over his shoulder, no doubt to check that she and Elphin hadn’t vanished into a magic mist while he wasn’t looking.

As the banks rose on each side, Cai scared them with stories of how Mordred’s bloodbeards had blocked the road with an avalanche, swooped down on them while they’d been busy clearing the rocks, and made off up the cliffs with the sword before the knights could even get their horses out of the pass to follow them. “Sir Bors said they must have really wanted to get hold of the sword, or else they’d have
stuck around to kill us all,” he told them in excitement. “They used their dark magic to get down the cliffs without being seen, and there was this great hailstorm with stones as big as my fist and purple lightning! We couldn’t see nothing! I thought they were going to murder me…”

“Wish they had,” Gareth muttered. “Then at least we might get some peace and quiet around here.” But the older boy had been listening to Cai’s tale as eagerly as the rest of them. He looked a bit jealous that the squire had been part of such an adventure.

“But weren’t you carrying the sword, Cai?” Arianrhod asked, her eyes wide. “How did you escape?”

“Yeah, how come you’re not even hurt?” Gareth said. “Or did you just hand it over,
all nice and innocent like?” He made his voice high and excited like a small boy’s. “Here, Prince Mordred,
please
take Excalibur, I’ve carried it all this way north just for you…”

Cai glowered at him. “Just remember I knocked you off your horse once, Gareth,” he said. “I can do it again.”

“Oh stop it, you two,” Rhianna said impatiently. “That sword they took wasn’t Excalibur anyway, so it doesn’t matter, does it? My mother’s more important.” She kept thinking of the queen in chains in Mordred’s dark tower. To make things even more miserable, it had started to rain. Elphin rode beside her, huddled under his cloak. He had knotted his reins so he wouldn’t have to hold them with his blistered fingers. “Do they hurt very much?” Rhianna whispered to her friend.
“Can you still play your harp?”

He gave her a small smile. “If I need to,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll help Sir Lancelot all I can.”

Cai admitted he’d left the sword tied to his pony’s saddle while he went to help with the rocks. “I thought they were going to take poor Sandy, too,” he said, patting the pony’s shaggy neck. “Only he stuck in his toes and refused to move, so they just grabbed the sword and left him.”

Stubborn Saxon pony,
Alba snorted, making Rhianna smile.

“Been cleverer if he’d kicked those bloodbeards to death like a proper knight’s horse,” Gareth muttered, but not very loudly. He still rode the pack pony, although Arianrhod had accepted a lift on the supply wagon the knights
had brought north with them so she wouldn’t have to ride double with the boy. Rhianna didn’t blame her.

While her friends swapped stories, she tried to think how best to get Sir Lancelot to listen to her. But, to her frustration, before they caught up with Lancelot and the others Sir Agravaine led them south off the road to a ruined villa whose gardens stretched down to the river.

“Bors said to stay out of sight,” he explained. “If there’s trouble, he’ll send a messenger.”

Rhianna stopped Alba and looked back the way they had come. She could just see an arched gateway, where the Roman road passed under the Wall heading north. A track led across the moor to meet it.

“Don’t even think about it, Damsel Rhianna!” Sir Agravaine growled, grabbing
Alba’s reins. “Get down off that fairy horse right now, and be sensible for once. We might still have Excalibur. But until we know exactly where the queen is, and how many men Mordred has brought with him to this duel, we can’t risk an all-out battle with his forces. If he’s made new allies in the north…” He and Sir Bedivere exchanged worried glances. “Our best hope is that Lancelot manages to kill the traitor.”

“Can’t we watch?” Gareth said, trying to see the fort, his eyes shining. “It should be a good fight.”

Rhianna clenched her fists. “Don’t any of you care about my mother? You don’t understand! If I don’t speak to Sir Lancelot before the joust,
he’s
the one who’s going to get killed, and then Mordred will come after us, anyway.”

But it was no good. Short of galloping off to the fort alone – which even she had to admit would be stupid with Mordred’s bloodbeards swarming all over it – there wasn’t much she could do until Sir Bors and the others came back.

She dismounted with a sigh. She tried to tell herself that she was worrying about nothing, and soon Sir Lancelot would come riding into the villa with the queen sitting behind him on his white stallion and the Lance of Truth shining proudly in his hand. Then the knights would see off Mordred’s forces, Merlin would be waiting for them at the stone circle, and they’d all return safely to Camelot with her mother and the two Lights, where she’d find her father’s ghost waiting to congratulate her on completing the second stage of her quest…

Horse comes!
Alba warned, pricking her silver ears.

Heart racing, Rhianna stared through the broken gates to the north. It had stopped raining, and wisps of mist rose from the river to hide the moor.

“Is it Lancelot’s stallion?” she asked the mare.

Not the white
, Alba said.
He is trapped in the between place.

Before she could work out what her mare meant, one of Sir Bors’ men came galloping through the gates on a sweaty horse, shouting for Sir Agravaine. “Prince Mordred tricked us!” he said. “He’s brought an army with him, and the queen’s not with them, as far as we can tell. Lancelot’s insisting on jousting with Mordred, anyway. But there’s some kind of dark magic at
work up there. Bors says to bring Excalibur…”

“Told you, didn’t I?” Rhianna shouted. She vaulted back on to Alba, glad she hadn’t unsaddled the mare. Calling for Elphin to follow, she drew her sword. “Take me there. Now!”

Sir Bors’ man looked startled at her commanding tone. But seeing Excalibur gleam in the mist, he nodded and turned his tired horse.

“Wait, you fool!” Sir Agravaine said. “The damsel’s not in charge here.”

Rhianna set her jaw. If he tried to stop her this time, she’d fight. But he looked at the blade shining in her hand and sighed. “We’re coming, too.”

They rode at a gallop across the moor, the knights’ horses thundering beside the two mist horses.
This is fun!
Alba said, flattening her ears
at the stallions. Cai and Gareth urged their ponies after them, determined not to be left behind. Arianrhod stayed at the villa with the wagon and the two faithful sentries who had followed them from Camelot. Rhianna hoped they’d look after her friend as well as they’d guarded her.

The ruined fort Mordred had picked for the duel perched on the ridge, open to the sky. Its walls framed a rectangular area with two entrances – an archway on their side leading through the Wall, and a gate leading north at the other. Mordred’s men had removed stones from the inner divisions and used them to block the other gates, so the only way in or out was through one of those entrances. Beyond the fort, in the valley north of the Wall, they could see smoke rising from many campfires.

More worrying still, above the fort hung a glimmering green mist. Shadows writhed and twisted inside it, reminding Rhianna of the souls the Wild Hunt had taken after the battle for Camelot last year. The green light filled both entrances like ghostly gates.

She shivered, and Alba flared her nostrils.
Smells bad.

Sir Agravaine swore under his breath. “Looks like a whole tribe of the devils over there! Where’s old Bors got to? And what’s that green stuff?”

“It’s got thicker since I left,” said the man who had come to fetch them. “That idiot Lancelot went charging inside without us, and nobody else could get in… Bors was trying to when I came to fetch you.”

“Magic from Annwn,” Elphin said. His eyes
whirled purple as he looked at the glimmering curtain blocking the gate.

They could hear the clash of swords from the other side of the Wall, interrupted by grunts of effort. Every so often a cheer went up, and the shadows in the green mist cackled and hissed.

Two of Lancelot’s men came galloping along the Wall to meet them. “Thank God you’re here!” they said to Sir Agravaine. “Lancelot’s in trouble in there – but we can’t get inside to help him! Bors has taken his men east to look for another way round. He says we’re to hold this entrance so Mordred’s lot don’t come through and jump them from behind, and you’re to take your men west till you find another gate and meet him on the other side. There’s a whole bunch of them wild bloodbeards in there with
their prince, and God only knows what else.” He eyed the green mist and crossed himself.

“Nearest gate’s at the last fort,” Agravaine said, thinking aloud in battle mode. “A mile back, unless we can get over the Wall before then. We could climb it once we get out of sight of Mordred’s sentries, but we’d be powerless against that lot on foot… our strength is in our speed and our horses, and we can’t leave the youngsters unguarded on this side.”

“We could come with you,” Rhianna said.

“Absolutely not.” He gave her an exasperated look.

“Maybe a few of us could climb over, sneak into their camp, find the queen and bring her out?” one of Lancelot’s men suggested.

“If she’s even there, which I doubt…”

While the knights argued their next move,
Rhianna gripped Excalibur’s hilt firmly, took a deep breath and quietly trotted Alba towards the ghostly entrance. She was about to tell the little horse to mist, when something flashed in the arch overhead, making the mare stop dead.

This is a bad place.
Alba flattened her ears and snorted.
I do not want to go in there.

“Nor do I,” Rhianna told her. “But we’ve got to, or we’ll lose the Lance of Truth to Mordred, and he might kill Sir Lancelot, and then he’ll hurt my mother.” She still blamed the champion knight for letting Mordred kidnap her mother, but they needed him to win this duel.

She peered through the rippling green curtain, trying to see the shadows struggling on the other side. No bloodbeard seemed to be near the gate. She quietly made a hole in the
mist with Excalibur and caught her breath.

Inside the fort, under a ghostly green roof, Sir Lancelot duelled fiercely with a knight dressed from head to toe in glittering black armour. She could see at once it wasn’t a fair fight. The dark knight was still on horseback, whereas Lancelot fought on foot. His white stallion stood riderless, pressed against the wall, sweating and trembling with fear.

Mordred!

Rhianna stared at her cousin, shivers of hatred going down her spine. He rode a black stallion, with one of his legs sticking out at an awkward angle. He’d tied the reins to the stump of his right arm, which ended in a flapping black gauntlet. His left hand wielded a sword that looked exactly like Excalibur, except that its jewel reflected the green light.

Lancelot was fending off the dark knight’s blows with his shield raised over his head. Each time Mordred’s sword came down, the champion knight grunted and staggered. Rhianna couldn’t see the Lance of Truth and hoped it hadn’t broken again.

The bloodbeards inside the fort seemed intent on the duel and hadn’t noticed her yet. But she was running out of time. Glancing back, she saw Gareth tug Sir Agravaine’s sleeve and point at her. Elphin came cantering after her on Evenstar, dragging his harp out of its bag and shouting something she couldn’t hear.