The Killing Sword

by Asotir

staring at the Lady of the Lake, and when she asked for her gift Balyn approached her, and with each step he took, the fury grew in him. ‘Evil be you found!’ he said. ‘You ask for my head, and therefore you shall lose yours.’ And with the sword he smote off her head before the King.

  ‘Alas, for shame!’ said Arthur, ‘why have you done this? You have shamed me and all my Court, for this was a lady that I was beholden to, and she came here under my protection inside my own castle walls. I shall never forgive you this outrage.’

  ‘Sire,’ said Balyn, ‘I regret your displeasure, but this same lady was the untruest lady alive, and by enchantment and sorcery she slew many good knights in my country. We also had war in Northumberland where I was born, and great unfriendship arose between us of the hills and her kind of the dales and water-lands. And it was by her leave that my mother was stripped and tormented and burned alive. For three years I have sought her without cease or let.’

  ‘Whatever cause you had, or thought you had,’ answered Arthur, ‘you should have forborne in my presence. Therefore do not question but that you will repent of this. For such a despite I never had in my court. Get you gone as fast as you may, or else the rage will overwhelm me and there will be another head lost that lay under my protection.’

  Balyn took up the head of the Lady of the Lake. And it had not bled any more than the head of a trout or a pike, and in his hands it felt as slick and slimy and cold as a fish-head.

  He took horse and looked about for the Naked Damsel, but she was nowhere to be found. Therefore he rode down to his hostelry where he met his squire, and they rode out of town.

  ‘Now,’ said Balyn, ‘we must part ways here. Take you this head to my friends and kin at home, and tell them how I have fulfilled what I set out to do. Let my friends know that our worst foe is dead, and that I am out of prison, and what adventure befell me at the getting of this sword.’

  ‘Alas,’ said the squire, ‘I am sorry you have displeased King Arthur, and you are greatly to blame for it.’

  ‘As for that,’ said Balyn, ‘I will ride in all haste to meet with King Ryons when his ship lands, and I will destroy him or else die in the attempt. And if it may fall out that I take him, then King Arthur will be my good and gracious lord again.’

  ‘Where shall I find you again?’ asked the squire.

  ‘In King Arthur’s Court,’ said Balyn.

  Then the squire took horse away to the north. But Balyn rode west to meet where King Ryons and twelve other kings should bring up their ships to land.

  V. The First Trial of Arms

  THEN KING ARTHUR and all the Court mourned the death of the Lady of the Lake. And the King buried her richly with great honor. All his barons and knights stood about the tomb the King had made for her, and showers fell from a gray sky all that day. But on a hill apart from them, the Naked Damsel stood and looked on, and her face was a mystery beneath her black veil.

  As soon as she had seen the Lady of the Lake riding to the court, the damsel had fled and hid. But when she spied that the Lady of the Lake was slain, she crept out from her hiding place and now watched with pleasure as the headless body was put in tomb.

  Then Sir Lanceour approached King Arthur.

  ‘Sire,’ he said, ‘give me leave to ride after Balyn and to revenge the despite that he has done to your good grace.’

  The King looked over the king’s son of Ireland and said, ‘Go, and do your best. I am right wroth of this Balyn. I would he were paid for the shame he did to me and to my Court.’

  ‘Sire, you shall soon count yourself well paid.’ And at that Sir Brisance smiled and was pleased. So Lanceour made ready to pursue Balyn. But Merlyn saluted the King, and he pointed up the hill with his staff to the Naked Damsel and said,

  ‘Now shall I tell you of that damsel that stands there and brought the sword into your Court. I shall tell you why she came. For she is the falsest damsel that lives.’

  ‘Say not so,’ the knights said, but Merlyn shook his head and scowled.

  ‘You defend her, for she is fair,’ he told them. ‘But I tell you, be not tempted by even the fairest of damsels, and you will prosper more. I myself will have nothing to do with women, nor ever have all my long life, not until I meet that one who will steal from me all mine arts, and besot me with her body, and entomb me alive into the bowels of the earth.’

  ‘If you know this thing, why can you not prevent it?’ asked the king.

  ‘I have that power, but also the wisdom to know that I will not use it when the fatal hour has come,’ answered Merlyn. ‘For there is not a man alive but he has at least one fair damsel who was born to betray him. And so the Damsel of the Sword was born for Balyn.

  ‘She has a brother, a passing good knight of prowess, and a full true man. And this damsel loved another knight and gave to him her maidenhead openly and shamelessly. And he boasted of it before her brother’s face, and so this good knight, her brother, fought with the knight who held her as his paramour, and slew him by force of his hands. When this false damsel learned about this, she went on her belly before the Lady Lille of Avalon and besought her of her help, to be avenged on her own brother.

  ‘And so the Lady Lille took of her this sword, that had been the sword of the knight that held the damsel to paramour, and the Lady Lille made for it the pommel, the scabbard, and the Belt of Strange Clasps as you saw. And the Lady Lille fashioned all this so that no man might pull the sword out of the sheathe unless he be one of the best knights of this realm, hard and full of prowess; and with that sword he should slay her brother.

  ‘This was why the damsel came unto this Court. I know all this as well as you stand before me now, and I would God she had not come unto you, for she never entered into fellowship of worship to do good, but only great harm. And that knight that won the sword, he shall be destroyed by that sword. And that is a great sadness, for there lives not today a knight of greater strength than he is, and he shall do unto you, my lord Arthur, great honor and kindness. And it is a pity, but he shall not live but a short while.’

  So Merlyn told the King and his Court, and the Naked Damsel blushed like fire beneath her veil.

  But meantime Lanceour armed him at all points, and dressed his shield on his shoulder and mounted upon horseback. And he took his spear in hand and rode at a great pace, as fast as his horse might bear him, and in a short while at a mountain pass he saw Balyn far above him.

  ‘Abide you,’ he cried in a loud voice, ‘Balyn, for you shall abide whether you want to or not. And the shield you bear shall not withstand my spear.’

  When Balyn heard the noise he turned his horse about fiercely and said, ‘Fair knight, what do you want with me? Will you joust with me?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Lanceour, ‘it’s what I came for.’

  ‘Maybe it would have been better for you to have stayed at home,’ said Balyn. ‘For many a man tries to put his enemy down, and yet it often ends up he is the one to go down. From what court are you sent?’

  ‘I come from the Court of King Arthur that is King over all England and the Isles, and I have come to avenge the wrong you did this day to King Arthur and his Court.’

  ‘Well,’ said Balyn, ‘I see that I will have to fight with you, and I’m sorry to have offended the King or any of his Court. But your quarrel with me is foolish, for the lady that is dead did me grave injuries, or else I would have been as loth as any knight alive to kill a lady.’

  ‘Make ready,’ said Lanceour, ‘and dress you to me. For soon only one of us will be alive.’

  So they rode apart and dressed their spears and shields, and then spurred their horses at each other with full speed and all the weight of their horses, their armor, and their bodies. Sir Lanceour’s spear splintered against Balyn’s shield, but Balyn’s spear tore through Sir Lanceour’s shield and was torn from his grasp. His horse bore Balyn on until turning about fiercely he drew the Sword and faced his enemy.

  He saw Sir Lanceour stretched out on the ground dead. Balyn�
��s spear had driven through Lanceour’s body and the crop of his horse also. He had slain both the rider and his steed.

  Balyn drew off his helm and wiped his face. But he heard hoofbeats coming hard upon him up the mountain, and he drew on helm again, wary of what other knights the King might send after him.

  It proved no knight that rode up to him, but a fair lady on a palfrey. And this lady when she saw that Lanceour was slain, she leapt down and clutched at the corpse, and began to weep.

  ‘O Balyn,’ she said, ‘two bodies you have killed with one heart, and two hearts in one body, and two souls.’

  And she rent her hair, unpinning it, and ripped her dress from her body, so she lay naked alongside the dead knight, kissing him and clasping him to her breast, until her mouth and her hands and her pale breasts were all bloody from his wounds. And still she would not give over, but she took his sword into her embrace, and wrapped around it arms and legs as though it had been living man.

  Balyn sat stricken with this sight. ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘I am sorry for you and your loss. In truth I had no rancor against Lanceour beyond the passing anger he had put upon me.’ And Balyn went down off his horse to take the sword from her, for he saw how its sharp edge cut her flesh. But at a spring the lady set the pommel to the ground and threw herself upon it, so the blade drove through her body.

  Balyn reeled back. He was