I passed him my water bag. “And I’ll give you this. You’re not an easy man, Gawain meqq Lot. Nor an easy flatterer.” I showed him the map, our position and Agrivaine’s. “His horse are , almost all Orkneymen. Now, are we thinking the same thing?”

“I do think we are, Count.”

“Why fight good men we may need later?”

Gawain said, “I’ve worried on that since I learned he was waiting.”

“Then go to your brother. Say that I want him with me. With . the future, not the past.”

Gawain’s frown vanished; he understood me now. “Not to fight?”

“Would you if you could avoid it?”

Silly to ask. Gawain would fight the ocean if it crowded him, but his own blood? “You know my brother and how he thinks.”

“Nevertheless, find him,” I said. “Ask him to join us. If you leave now, you can be back by tomorrow noon or before.”

Gawain heaved himself up. “You’ll be here?”

“Until you return. Tell him that, too, as earnest of my peace. And that I hope he returns with you.”

“Not likely.” Gawain took a deep breath and wheeled his thick arms wide, slapping them down hard on his smoke-grimed breeches. “It’s a fool’s errand and all for naught. He’d rather fight you than be king himself. But do not fancy killing my own lads.”

I gave him leave to take a small party of his own choosing, Orkneymen like himself to insure welcome.

Gawain mounted. “When he says no, what then?”

I tried to look regretful. “Then tell him he’s in for a fight, embrace him like a brother and get the hell back here.”

My big captain nodded grimly. “I fear that’s the shape of it. But rest you here, I’ll be gone in the half hour.”

And so he was, and I watched him out of sight on his mission. Some twenty minutes later, the rest of us mounted, left the road and struck northwest at a hard pace across the rolling foothills.

Shameful lying to Gawain like that, but the feint was necessary. I’d used Cador’s own well-named tactic: constructive dis—

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honesty. By the time Agrivaine heard my offer and had a roaring good time strutting and refusing for the benefit of his patient brother, I’d be around him and running for the crown.

We rode across the hills through a moonlit night and forded River CaJdor at dawn, resting briefly on the north bank. We were now only an hour south of the road between Cair Legion and Eburacum, which Bedivere and I had traveled before. Once on it, we would raise tiny Kaelcacaestir by late afternoon.

Sitting with Trystan, washing my feet in the shallows, I felt rather proud of my ruse. We’d get there without a sword drawn or a man lost.

“And only Gawain to face,” said Trystan thoughtfully.

“Ach-y-fi, don’t remind me. I’ll probably receive a challenge, despite his oath.”

“At least one,” Trystan said.

“But he has to catch us first.”

Trystan squinted off down the river shore. “Here comes Geraint. And out of sorts, I’d say.”

I wiped my feet and put on my boots while Geraint trudged up leading his horse. He was definitely uneasy. He greeted me shortly and ignored Trystan like a stone.

“I took a notion to see to rny sister’s doings, not doubting for a moment she’s tenfold safe with the Lancelot, but I can’t seem to find them since we crossed Caldor.”

Neither had I. Geraint would be hanged before he asked Trystan, but that courteous man told him anyway.

“The lady’s horse picked up a stone in its hoof a few miles back. Lancelot stopped to-remove it. Perhaps they rested there.”

Geraint bristled. “Rested there? Stopped to sleep there and the two of them wrapped in the same cloak and—”

“Geraint,” I soothed, “you said yourself Eleyne’s tenfold safe. Still we ought to bring them up. Shall we ride together?”

“Aye.” Geraint mounted and swung his horse away. “There’s more than Agrivaine’s men loose this day. This is the route Marcus must take north, and it strikes me I’m not his favorite subject.”

Trystan reached for his sword belt and stood up. “Shall I come, Arthur?”

“You are not needed,” Geraint snapped. He stared at Trystan as if daring him to reply. I interceded.

“Geraint, as a friend, do not insult a battle-seasoned lord who

is forbidden by oath to answer you now. Tryst, get what rest you can. Tell Bedivere we’ll be back in an hour or come look for us.”

“Sir,” Trystan acknowledged, then bowed with sardonic grace to Geraint. “My respects till a more suitable time, Prince. And to your sister.”

“Such as you do not address her,” said Geraint. “Forbidden indeed. Come, Arthur.”

The current at the shallows was no swifter than Geraint’s free-flowing condemnation. A shame 1 was so desperate for men I need swear into service a wastrel the like of Trystan. The sin of adultery aside, Geraint had no use for perfumed poets who warbled their way into women’s favors. Men who, for a night’s sport, would make a queen out of a whore, for certainly had he not made a whore out of a queen? Did not the charitable Eleyne avoid Yseult at Castle Dore before the house of Dyfneint fell from Marcus’ favor? And furthermore and thus and so and on and on.

I maintained politic silence while Geraint judged and damned his way through Trystan’s questionable pedigree and half the noble blood of Cornwall, giving him minimal attention, the rest alert for Lancelot. But finally he got on my nerves.

“Geraint, have you ever loved a woman?”

“No, in truth, not yet, and myself only one and twenty and what with one duty and the other.”

“Well, why don’t you wait until you know how a man feels before you judge him?”

“What mean you?” Geraint said. “How he feels, indeed. Should 1 then top the queen myself?”

Oh, the man could weary you. “No, Prince, only—”

“Truly, Arthur, it confounds me that so fine a man as you should attain high rank so misinformed. Did not my own sister say as much? Arthur Pendragon is a good man, she said, but sadly lacking in the gentler graces of refined blood, and what is more—”

“Geraint, will you belt up!”

He drew away from me, bruised. “Well now. Well, of course, to be sure. If you’re going to sulk, then go your ways.”

We rode in blessed silence over a rocky stretch of hillside, eyes open for our two stragglers. My horse snorted, tossing his head. When he did it again, I pulled up and dismounted.

“What’s afoot?” Geraint asked.

“Hush.” I flattened out against a slab of rock, ear pressed

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against it. Not even breathing, I listened and felt what the rock had to tell me. A footfall or a dozen hoofs clattering tallfolk-careless over hard ground.

Several horses coming at a trot.

“Riders,” I told Geraint, mounting again. “Not too far off.”

“Sister and Lancelot?”

“Maybe.” But yfcm/1-shrewd, I wouldn’t bet on it. This country was patched with thick woods, well suited to hiding an ambush.

“Let’s hurry, Geraint.”

We found our charges by ear a few minutes later—the sound of a harp and Eleyne’s singing—in a grove of trees lining a trickle of brook. The sun was still not far up, and since Lancelot knew my own halting place, he considered it safe to let the lady rest after the wearying night ride.

They seemed quite at ease by the little brook, Eleyne with her harp, Lancelot stretched out at her feet, rapt in her voice, absently dismembering wildflowers and throwing them into the stream. Seeing us, Eleyne ended the song she was assaulting with a dramatic if inaccurate chord and sprang up to greet Geraint, who was fussing at her before we dismounted and somewhat put out with Lancelot.

“Lord Ancellius, I do not question your intentions—”

“They are honorable,” Eleyne vouched with perhaps something less than satisfaction.

“But your wisdom in remaining so far behind us, since Arthur’s already heard strange horse nearby. We must hurry back across the river.”

Eleyne shushed him with a kiss, animated by an excitement that made her almost attractive. “Oh, but it’s been such a lovely morning! We rested and sang, and this last hour I’ve told Lancelot of our family and the searching for the Holy Grail.”

And Lancelot himself was lit with the same enthusiasm. More than that, the light of fervor. “The Grail, my lord! In their very family and lost in their own land. When mere’s time, when you’re king, God’s love, let me seek it with them.”

His passion reached out at me, almost clutched at my shut. “God knows I’m not worthy even to see it—”

“But you are!” Eleyne took his hand. “And Arthur promised me such a man as you. You did, Arthur.”

“Did what?”

“Oh, do you not remember your words as you lay wounded at

Neth, your very words which I took as oath and promise? ‘If I find a man of sufficient grace, I will send him to you.’ “

Geraint was duly impressed. “You feel this to be true, sister?”

She nodded firmly. “Was I not spared the fever death because of my trust in God? I know it is true.”

Geraint nailed it home. “My sister has always lived in the hand of Christ and knows her spiritual kindred. I do beseech you, Arthur, let him seek the Grail for her.”

Well, they were all a bit much for a quiet morning. Lancelot dropped to one knee before me, face uplifted and shining, more beautiful than ever I’d seen him. Lancelot, the sad, deep man, more homeless than any of us, who most hated himself for what was done in the midlands. God damn him, God love him, this was his passion, strong as Trystan’s, the thrust of soul that must reach for purity ever beyond its grasp. Not the finding but the quest.

“Arthur, you are my lord and my king-to-be on earth, a fulfilled man who knows nothing of emptiness. I’ve sought God in empty places, prayed in empty churches, walked unhurt through empty battles, not worth killing. But this is something that can use me, must use me. When there’s time, when you’re crowned, can I—I mean—”

“Yes, quite. But now we’ve got to—”

Ask the broken dam to hold back the flood. “All my life I’ve heard of the Grail, how it was lost somewhere in the west, in the mist—”