Pelleas was a friend to me before he left. Most folk would give me only a stare; Pelleas would give me a smile and a greeting, but a glare and no greeting to Gawain, upon whom most folk smiled. I meant sometime to ask Nyneve why. Not now.

I grew weary of feeling folk’s stares. I asked Nyneve, “Shall we walk out on the meadows?”

“Yes.”

We turned toward the gates. But just then there sounded a clattering, and a heavy ringing of hooves on cobbles, and cries as folk scrambled out of the way. In rode a massive, harsh-bearded knight in battered armor.

“Pellinore,” Nyneve whispered, stepping back.

Nyneve was not the only damsel who feared him. I had heard by then how Sir Pellinore had begotten Torre upon a milkmaid. Rode up and seized her and raped her and rode away again.

Pellinore sent his charger into the courtyard at a ramping trot as if he did not care whether he might trample someone. Even lords and ladies had to get out of his way as he rode through with his armor clashing—he wore full, heavy armor and a broadsword as long as my arm. Froth foamed from his charger’s mouth, splattering the silks of the ladies he passed. A stench issued off him. His shield was hacked, his armor ravaged with sword cuts and spotted with rust from months in the field, and—I gasped. Slung from his saddle, tied there by its hair, hung a human head.

I looked again, for I was seeing what it truly meant to be a knight, a fighter—and then I felt my knees weaken. I had to clutch Nyneve’s shoulder to steady myself. That head—it seemed to look back at me with its sunken eyes, to curse me with its decaying mouth. I knew it. Even though it hung dead from Pellinore’s saddle, I knew it: the head of King Lothe.

7

SOME PEOPLE FIND BLOOD PRETTY, THE BRIGHTEST OF BRIGHT reds, brighter than the poppy flower, brighter than the pimpernel. I find blood ugly.

Blood colored the rest of that year in Camelot for me.

From the moment that Pellinore rode in with King Lothe’s head at his knee, it was plain to Gawain and Garet that Pellinore had to be killed. It was equally plain to them that I would help them. And as Pellinore was a knight of the Round Table, he could not be challenged; he would have to be ambushed.

“But that’s three against one,” I said.

“What do I care?” In our chamber, Gawain sat drinking his sixth or seventh mug of hard mead; he glared at me, half weeping, half savage. He had seen King Lothe’s head. Garet had not seen it; Garet sat more sober.

“But—if this Pellinore killed your father as he says he did, in fair combat—”