With one hand on her back I hoisted my head above water. I gasped for breath, choked, coughed, gasped again. At some time since I had fallen from the top of the cliff I had lost my sword, my shield, and my helm; now I tore off my heavy chain mail as well and kicked off my boots. I could breathe. I might live. Gull paddled strongly, riding the water like a little white boat, and the swift water whirled us along between steep stony banks, away from Caer Morgana, until the ravine opened into a valley dense with forest on both sides, and the water quieted, and Gull paddled us to shore.

I crawled out of the water, lay on mud, and coughed until I vomited.

When I could sit up, I looked at Gull, who lay panting beside me. I had nothing but the soaked clothing on my body, but I was alive. “Thank you,” I told her.

I hoped Nyneve could hear me, but knew that probably she could not. Probably she was already gone. Humbly I sensed how hard it was, hard and dangerous, for her to be in Gull in that way.

She had looked as if she were in a bad way. I knew that, quest or no quest, I must go to her.

In a pavilion in the Forest Perilous, a knight lay sleeping in his smallclothes, his naked sword near his hand. The first glimmer of dawn gave enough light. I crept in silently in my bare feet, but once I held the sword in my hand, I smacked him across the chest with the flat of it to awaken him.

He reared up with a roar, “Thief!” But I addressed him with the sword to silence him.

“I am going to take your armor and your sword,” I told him, “and your lance and your horse, for I have need of them.”

He turned a rich shade of red, like the wild strawberries that dotted the meadows.

“But you can fight me for them, if you like,” I added cheerfully. “Do you have an extra sword?”

I stepped back, and he bolted for a weapon—and a shield, while I had nothing but my tunic wrapped around my forearm—and then he lunged at me.

Odd, what a difference a few days had made. He was stronger than I, but my despair had hardened in me, and I did not care whether I were killed; if I died, very well, it would spite Morgan le Fay and prove her wrong. Reckless, I took cuts yet fought like a very demon, quick and hungry. In only a few moments I forced him to the ground.

“Yield,” I told him, the point of my sword at his throat.

He glared up at me. “Curse you.”

“I am already well accursed. Say that you yield.”

“I yield.”

“Your name?”

“Sir Dalbert.”