The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [200]
Something glinted near my foot. My knife, lying where Red had struck it from my hand. I reached for it. I still could not stand, but threw it as hard as I could at Red's back. It was a feeble throw, and missed him. But the flash of its passing made the brown horse flinch and swerve, and sent its rider's blow wide. With the slither and whine of metal, Caliburn caught the blade and flung it wider, then Arthur drove the great stallion in and killed Red with a blow through the heart.
There was a moment when the sword jammed and could not be withdrawn, and the body, falling, made a dead weight on the King's sword arm. But the grey stallion knew about that, too. Balin, trying to wheel the cream cob to take the King in the rear, met teeth and armed hoofs. An upward slash laid the cream's shoulder open. It swerved, screaming, and turned against rein and spur to flee. But Balin -- brave ruffian that he was -- wrenched its head back by main force, just as the King dragged his sword clear of Red's body and wheeled back, right-handed, into fighting range.
I believe that in that last moment Balin recognized the King. But he was given no time to speak, much less beg for mercy. There was one more vicious, brief flurry, and Balin took Caliburn's point in his throat, and fell to the trampled and bloody grass. He writhed once, gasped, and drowned on a gush of blood. The cob, instead of running, now that it was no longer constrained, simply stood with head hanging and shaking legs, while the blood ran down its shoulder. The other horses had gone.
Arthur leaped down, wiped his sword on Balin's body, shook the folds of his cloak from his left arm, and came across to me, leading the grey. He touched my bloodstained shoulder.
"This blood. Is any of it yours?"
"No. And you?"
"Not a scratch," he said cheerfully. He was breathing only a little faster than usual. "Though it wasn't quite a massacre. They were trained men, or so it seemed to me, when there was time to notice...Sit quietly for a moment; I'll get you some water."
He dropped the stallion's reins into my hand, reached to the pommel for the silver-mounted horn he carried there, then trod lightly towards the river. I heard his foot strike something. The quick stride stopped short, and he exclaimed. I turned my head. He was staring down at the wreck of one of my saddlebags, where, in the scatter of spilled food and slashed leather, lay a strip of torn velvet, heavily stitched with gold. One of the jewels that Balm had torn from it lay winking beside it in the grass.
Arthur swung round. He had gone quite white.
"By the Light! It's you!"
"Who else? I thought you knew."
"Merlin!" Now he really was trying for breath. He came back to stand over me. "I thought -- I hardly had time to look -- just those murdering rascals butchering an old man -- unarmed, I thought, and poor, by the look of the horse and trappings..." He went on both knees beside me. "Ah, Merlin, Merlin..."
And the High King of all Britain laid his head down on my knee, and was silent.
After a while he stirred and lifted his head.
"I got your token, and the message from the courier. But I don't think I really quite believed him. When he first spoke and showed me the Dragon it seemed right...I suppose I'd never thought you could really die, like mortal men...but on the way here, riding alone, with nothing to do but think -- well, it ceased to be real. I don't know what I pictured; myself ending up again, perhaps, in front of that blocked cave mouth, where we buried you alive." I felt a shiver go through him. "Merlin, what has happened? When we left you for dead, sealed in the cave, it was the malady, of course, giving the appearance of death; I realize that now. But afterwards? When you woke,