The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [16]
Sir Thomas wiped a cloth across the toe of his boot and admired the shine, then looked up as Gerard walked by. “Ho, Gerard! You weren’t at the fire last night.”
Gerard paused when the young knight called his name, and said, “No.” After dinner the knights and squires had gathered to share stories. Sir Matthias encouraged it, to a certain level.
Gerard had wanted to join in, but he was still smarting a little from the comments made during the day’s ride, and the thought of dealing with Newt and Callum, both of whom were part of the gathering, had seemed too much to bear. Instead he had taken a turn around the campsite, so spread out as to barely deserve the name, and then gone to bed.
“Pity. Sir Ruden was telling us stories of the Northern Campaign, when Merlin tamed that so-called monster and banished it to the lake.”
“It was a monster, nothing so-called about it!” Sir Ruden had a thick northern accent, but his indignation was clear. “Ah, that was an adventure, it was. Not like this.” He spat once, indicating his opinion of the Quest.
“We’re about to do some training with swords before Sir Matthias decides to move us out again,” Sir Thomas went on. “Care to join us?”
“Us” was Sir Thomas, Sir Ruden, who was from the Highlands, Sir Brand, and Sir Daffyd, both of whom were from Camelot proper.
Sir Brand and Sir Daffyd were also two of the least-experienced knights on the Quest and, in Gerard’s opinion, not the sharpest men in the group. But they were knights.
Thomas had been made a knight only just before the Quest rode out. Gerard had, in fact, worked with him years ago, when both their masters were at Camelot at the same time. Thomas had not been in Camelot when the sleep-spell was cast. If he had been, perhaps Gerard would not have been the oldest squire left awake in the castle, and perhaps none of what had followed would have happened at all.
Thomas didn’t seem to hold this against Gerard. He was secure in the status of his newly granted spurs, polished and gleaming against his boots. Not that there had been very much glory: Merlin and Arthur had specifically asked Gerard not to speak to the other knights about his adventures, for fear of raising the very doubts and questions about Arthur’s kingship that Morgain had intended to create by her spells.
“All right, let’s get started,” Sir Brand said, getting into his saddle. He reached down for the long, blunted lance Daffyd handed him. “Thomas, you and Gerard—”
“Oh, please!”
At the sound of a woman’s voice, Gerard spun around, even as his ears told him that it wasn’t Ailis. The voice was too high, too breathy, too delicate.
“Please, good sirs, help me.”
She was tiny, barely as tall as Gerard’s shoulder, with a round, flushed face and a mass of dark curly hair that had twigs and leaves in it, as though she had just come crashing through the undergrowth.
“Milady?” Thomas said, gallant as though he were the eldest of King Arthur’s knights, and not the latest and most recent. She was no lady—her drab homespun kirtle and scuffed boots made that clear—but her distress was real, and the knights responded to that exactly as they had been trained.
“Milady, how may we help you?”
“My village. Back that way,” and she waved a vague hand northward. “Terrible—terrible!” Her nut-brown eyes were bloodshot and showed tremendous fear, lending force to her jumbled, breathless words. Her hands, scratched and bleeding, rose to clutch at Sir Ruden’s sleeve, as he leaned down from the back of his horse to hear her words better.
“Save us,” she pleaded. “Only you, with your swords, can save us.”
No sweeter balm ever landed on their ears, the perfect antidote to their failure to discover the Grail.
“Milady, we will,” Brand vowed, offering his hand to draw the girl up onto his horse.
She pulled back, clearly afraid of the beast. Instead she turned and, lifting her skirt a little to move more easily, said “I beg you, follow me.” And with that, she ran off toward the villages.
Gerard and Thomas hauled themselves up and into their saddles, their horses already