The Legend of the King (7 page)

"It might not be me," Gaheris said. "After all, the estates officially belong to Gawain. Someone could be taking revenge on him."

"Or on me."

"Or all of us. I don't know. But we need to find out. We can't stay here to starve, and we don't have a chance in battle. I'm going to signal a parley."

"Can't we wait a few more days? They might realize that they've already destroyed everything of value and move on."

"If it were just us, maybe. But what about those children?"

"Arthur might send help."

"We don't even know if our messengers got through. If they had, Arthur would have sent someone by now."

"Then we should send more messengers. Listen: you call a parley. Hear their terms and ask for time to think about it. While you're keeping them busy talking, I'll send one of the young men out the back on my horse to take a message to Arthur. We'll use the Ivy Gate."

Gaheris considered this briefly, then nodded. "All right. If he gets away, I'll stall a few more days to give him time to look for help and guide them to us." He left the wall, then reappeared ten minutes later with a white cloth tied to a stick. He waved it from the wall until there was a shout from the siege camp and an answering flag. Then he set down the flag and waited.

They had more than enough time to find a volunteer messenger and get him ready while they waited. It was almost an hour before a knight in black armor strolled nonchalantly up to the wall. "Why isn't he on a horse?" Lynet asked. "I thought knights always conducted battlefield negotiations on horseback."

"They do," Gaheris said. "It's a calculated insult."

"What do you want?" called the black knight.

"To whom am I speaking?" Gaheris shouted back.

"Sir Breunis Sans Pité," the knight replied. "Who are you?"

"Sir Gaheris of Orkney, fellow of King Arthur's Round Table."

Sir Breunis snorted loudly. "
Former
Round Table, you mean."

"No," Gaheris replied. "I'm pretty sure that wasn't what I meant."

"The Round Table had its day, and now that day is past. What do you want, Gaheris?"

"I was about to ask you the same question. What do you want?"

"Oh, is the knight of the proud Round Table asking for terms?" Sir Breunis sneered.

Lynet didn't hear the rest of the exchange. As soon as Sir Breunis appeared, she slipped away and ran to the stables, where the volunteer waited. "Go as fast as you can at first, Douglas," she said. "Put the county behind you. The mare will last longer than you think. After you're well away, you can rest her. Stay near the Great North Road; if the king has sent help, it will be coming that way."

"Ay, milady," the youth said. He smiled, clearly looking forward to doing something, instead of waiting around inside the walls.

"Take no chances, Douglas. This isn't a lark." He nodded, and she led the horse out of the stable to the back wall of the castle, which was covered with a mass of ivy. Lynet glanced wryly at young Douglas. She had always been careful not to do magic in front of the people of Orkney, not wanting the name of enchantress, but there didn't seem to be any way to hide it this time. "Don't tell anyone what you're about to see, all right?" she said.

"Milady?"

Lynet uttered a few guttural words, and the ivy began to coil and curl and writhe like snakes, slowly pulling away to reveal an ancient wooden door set into the wall. The door swung open. "Through there, and fast. You'll have a furlong in the open before you reach the woods."

Douglas showed no particular surprise at Lynet's spell. He simply grinned again and booted the mare into a run. Lynet watched for a second, then spoke again. The door closed, and the ivy slithered back into place. Hurrying up the nearest stairs, she looked over the open field behind the hall. She saw no movement; Douglas had gotten away.

A minute later, breathless from running, she arrived back at the front wall of the castle just as Gaheris was stepping down to the courtyard. He looked a question at her, and she nodded quickly. Gaheris almost smiled. "Good."

"What does that Sir Breunis want?" Lynet demanded.

"He says he'll let all the women and children go—you included—as well as every man who's not of noble birth."

Lynet frowned. "But
none
of the men are of noble birth, Gary."

"Except for me."

Lynet blinked, and something jolted inside her. "You."

"It seems that I was right: this is personal. Someone has taken a keen dislike to me."

"So ... you give yourself up and everyone else goes free?"

"If you can trust his word, which I don't. Still, it's more chance than they'll have, waiting inside here to starve."

"Gary, no!"

"Fortunately, we have a few days. We'll give young Douglas a chance to find help."

But the next morning, after a restless night, Lynet was roused from her bed by a cry from the front wall, followed by a shriek and a wail. She hurried to the main gate, where Gaheris was already directing some men to raise the portcullis just enough to drag a shapeless bundle under the gate. Lynet knew what it was even before they turned it over. It was Douglas, dead.

Gaheris shook his head. "No," he said. "Stalling for more time only makes sense if you have something to wait for. Since we've no reason to think there's any help coming, then stalling is just putting off the inevitable and making people hungry in the process. If it's to be done, then let it be done, and 'twere well it were done quickly."

"What does
that
mean?" Lynet snapped in a surly voice.

"I don't know. It just sounded dour and cryptic. It's not my fault; I'm Scottish. But I have to do this anyway, lass. You know that."

Lynet stared over the wall at the siege camp for a long minute without seeing it. "I know," she said. "Why do you think they want
you?
"

Gaheris shrugged, and Lynet forbore to ask the next question,
What will they do to you?
She didn't want to think about that.

Gaheris placed the shaft of a white flag into a slot on top of the wall, to request another parley. There was no immediate response from the camp, and Gaheris shrugged. "I'm not going to stand here and wait for them again. They're getting their terms; let them wait for me. Come on, lass. I need to go talk to our people."

He led the way down from the wall to the main courtyard. At one side a carpenter was putting together a rough box to serve as a coffin for Douglas, and on the other, Douglas's mother and a young woman kept silent vigil beside the young man's body. "My friends!" Gaheris called out. "I need to speak with you." The huddled crowd rose and gathered at the foot of the stairs where Gaheris stood.

"I have negotiated a truce," Gaheris said.

There was a murmur of relief and excitement, but in the midst of the hubbub a village elder named Daw raised his voice. "What terms? What do they want?"

Gaheris smiled crookedly. "You all go free, back to your homes."

"What's left o' them, ye mean," Daw said promptly.

"Ay. But you'll be free to rebuild."

"And what do they want?"

Gaheris sighed. "Me. I give myself up, and you go free."

The crowd was silent. Then Daw spoke again. "What do they want wi' ye?"

"They didn't say. Maybe they want a hostage. I'm King Arthur's nephew, after all."

The gathered people murmured among themselves for a few moments, digesting this information. Then another old man moved forward to stand beside Daw. Lynet recognized young Douglas's grandfather, a venerable old man called simply Mak. Mak looked at Lynet. "Beggin' yere pardon for speakin' plain, my lady, but these people don't seem hostage-taking types. They're killers. Animals. If they want Sir Gaheris, it's my thought they mean to kill him."

In the tightening of his jaw, Lynet read Gaheris's concurrence with this, but he said, "We don't know that. But even if we did, it would still be better for one person to die than for all of us to stay here and starve."

Now old Daw looked at Lynet. "What do you say to this, my lady? What will
you
do?"

"I'll be staying with Sir Gaheris," Lynet said quietly.

"Lynet—" Gaheris began.

"I recall," Daw said meditatively, "the blight. Maybe some o' ye don't remember it so well. It was nigh twenty year ago."

"Seventeen," corrected Mak.

"We none of us had enow to eat," Daw continued, ignoring the interruption. "And Sir Gaheris fed us from 'is own storehouses and ate the same thin gruel as the rest of us. And we knew he wasn't givin' us everything, and there was some as muttered about how he was holdin' back, but then the next year he opened up the rest o' the barns and gave us seed to start over."

At this point, Mak added, "And milord and milady rode about the fields and villages as grand and tall as the noblest landowners in England, makin' us proud, even as they wore the same one suit o' clothes, patched up and mended, like the rest of us did."

A woman spoke up now. "Lady Lynet nursed my Tommy back to health when I was took wi' the same sickness. She sat right by my hearth all night. I remember. I couldn't get out of bed, but I could see."

Gaheris cleared his throat. "I've some fine memories, too," he said, "though I don't know that I'd pick the blight as the thing to dwell on just now. But I think we're straying from the real point. I'm not asking your advice. I'm telling you what I've decided. In a few minutes, I'll go out and give myself up. I want you to gather your families and things and get ready to leave. Lynet, that means you too."

"I say we fight," cried a man's voice.

"If you fight, you'll die!" Gaheris snapped.

"Could be," agreed Daw.

"Ay," said Mak, nodding. "Seems a likely bet."

"And if you do what I say, you'll live!" Gaheris added.

"Ye think so?" asked Mak. "Runnin' off and goin' on wi' your own life, knowin' that ye left the best man ye ever knew to die—that's what ye call livin'?"

"Maybe he's mixed up livin' and breathin'," suggested Daw.

"Nay!" Mak protested. "Sir Gary's not a simpleton. Shame on ye, Daw!"

"What about your women and children?" Gaheris demanded.

"I'll see to them," Lynet said. "When you and the men go out to fight, I'll take them out the back way to hide in the woods. I'll do what I can to keep them safe."

Gaheris shook his head with frustration. "What are you talking about, Lynet? Who said anything about going out to fight?"

"Nobody had to, milord," said a tall villager named Coll, the man who had been making the coffin for Douglas. "We won't let you go out alone, and that's all there is to it."

"You would disobey the direct command of your liege lord?" Gaheris demanded.

"Ay," said Daw. The other men nodded among themselves.

"See?" Mak said to Daw. "I told ye he wasn't a simpleton."

"Maybe not, but he
did
seem to think at first that we'd go along wi' this daft plan," Daw replied. "So he's not what ye'd call quick-witted, either."

Gaheris sighed. "Let me think about this for a minute." He glanced at Lynet. "Well, Miss Helpful? You want to suggest something else?"

Together they made their way back up to the wall and looked out at the field before the castle. Sir Breunis had seen the white flag, and he had gathered three knights on horseback to accompany him to the parley. "Looks as if he's planning to take you prisoner right away," Lynet said. "He's bringing reinforcements."

"Three knights to take me prisoner," Gaheris mused. "Either he hasn't heard about my skill with weapons, or he's an amazing coward."

"The coward theory seems most likely," Lynet replied.

"Any one of those three could take me without breaking a sweat. Especially that big fellow in the..." He trailed off.

"The one in the middle?" Lynet finished. "On the big black?"

Gaheris was silent.

"What is it, Gary?"

"Lynet, my love," Gaheris said after a minute. "I know you're the most hopeless duffer at casting hexes, but do you by chance have a spell for changing people's appearance?"

"What do you mean?"

"Could you change my features, for instance, to look like someone else?"

"If I could, do you think I'd have left you looking like that all these years?" Lynet said at once. Then she shook her head. "Sorry; that was reflex. You
did
leave quite an opening. What do you have in mind?"

"Is there such a spell?"

"Not really. I can change hair color and add or take away birthmarks, but not much else."

Gaheris turned his back to the approaching knights. His face was thoughtful. "Sir Breunis has seen me only once, for a few minutes yesterday and from a distance. Do you think that if you changed his hair and dressed him up, you could make young Douglas's body pass for mine?"

Lynet stared, uncomprehending, but at last said, "You're about the same height. It might work. You want us to tell Sir Breunis that you died during the night and give him Douglas's body?"

"No, if he's got orders to kill me, he'll want to see it happen. But I might see a way out of this. Go work on Douglas. Make him look as much like me as you can and then put him in one of the matched suits of armor. One of the silver suits, I think."

"What are you going to do?" Lynet demanded.

"Challenge Breunis to single combat."

"What? He'll never agree to that."

"I hope not," Gaheris said. "Can't talk now. Here they come." Lynet glanced away from Gaheris to see Sir Breunis and his three companions at the foot of the wall.

"Well, Sir Gaheris? Have you decided to give yourself up?" shouted Sir Breunis.

"I have concluded that we cannot defeat your army, at least," Gaheris replied. He had stepped back from the wall and had one hand up to partly obscure his face. "But you must realize that a man of honor cannot simply give up."

Sir Breunis guffawed. "What makes you think I would know or care about your notion of honor?"

"Right, my mistake," Gaheris said. "Just take my word for it. A knight of Arthur's table doesn't just surrender. Instead, I challenge you to single combat. If I win, you spare us all. If I lose, the castle is yours, and all the people inside go free."