And he took a brown apple and some dried beef from the knight’s saddlebags. Sorry, friend. Should’ve yielded. He spent an eternity on his hands and knees combing through the grass for that damned fastening pin and not finding it.

  Then he rode on toward Camelot.

  He wasn’t sure what would happen when he got there. At seventeen Collum was tall, ungodly strong, virtually ambidextrous, and terrifyingly quick on his feet, with the shoulders of a stevedore and the delicate hands of a goldsmith. He was the best fighter on the island of Mull, not just now but in living memory.

  But Mull wasn’t exactly a hotbed of world-class knightly talent. It was a cold, humpy place of treeless green hills, their flanks streaked with silvery streams, their peaks dragging low white clouds like tufts of wool caught on brambles. If it had a distinction it was probably that it was, in the face of stiff competition, the rainiest of the Out Isles. Wind scoured it. Chilly lochs penetrated deep into its interior. Huge shaggy red cows and tiny brown kittenish sheep wandered its coarse meadows.

  Not many knights wandered the meadows of Mull. It had been years since Collum had faced anyone in his own league or anything like it, not since he was thirteen and beat the house knight at Dubh Hall who said he’d fought with Arthur at Bedegraine, in the War of the Eleven Kings. He was good, but was he good enough? The knights of the Round Table were fantastically, legendarily elite. The Table was a golden hoop that bound this shattered world together, and it drew to itself the greatest fighters in Britain and beyond: Sir Tristram from Cornwall, Sir Marhaus from Hibernia, Percival from Northgalis, Lancelot from Gascony, and Palomides from even farther away, the far East, Sarras, or wherever the hell he came from.

  But if there was a place for Palomides, maybe there could be a place for Collum. He couldn’t be more of an oddity than a Saracen. And he did have one single gossamer-thin connection to the world of the Table, namely Sir Bleoberys, who supposedly was his brother’s wife’s godfather’s second cousin.

  It was a long way from Mull to Camelot. Adventures were quick and exciting when you heard about them, but when you were inside one they happened very, very slowly. There were no maps of Britain, and Collum followed the sun and the coast and the drovers’ roads and directions from strangers, some of whom spoke unfamiliar tongues and seemed never to have seen a man in armor before. They stared at him as if he were a gleaming metal angel who’d fallen to earth.

  Collum passed through a dog’s breakfast of northern realms: the Royaume Sauvage, whose fractious kings and queens claimed descent via Brutus Greenshield from the first of the Britons, Brutus of Troy; mountainous Rheghed, domain of the boy king Carmac; the Duchy of Cambenic, ruled by Duke Escant, whose people had been driven off their land by Picts and forced to lay claim to a sere and bitter peninsula. These rulers had their own kingdoms but all of them were kings under King Arthur, High King of Britain. Arthur’s law governed them, and it was at his pleasure that they sat in their thrones.

  For long stretches, days sometimes, Collum saw nobody at all. The world was vast, and people were few. He bedded down in fields, wrapped in his cloak, with the Milky Way howling across the black sky above him. He clopped along sunken holloways and past isolated farmsteads, their little square fields scratched lengthways and crossways like a chessboard. He circumnavigated more lochs than he could imagine a rational Creator creating. Innumerable dogs barked at him. The further south he went the more verdant and lush the land became.

  But the most amazing thing about Britain was Rome.

  Collum knew that Rome had ruled Britain for three hundred and fifty years, in theory, but the Romans had never reached the Out Isles in person. He knew Rome only in the form of little things, bits and bobs, glass beads, coins with the heads of emperors on them. Errant particles of a distant empire.

  But here in the southlands Rome had thrived and built, and its ruins were everywhere, the bleached bones of an empire. Having crossed Hadrian’s world-girdling wall at Luguvalium, Collum found himself on a magnificent Roman road, level and cambered and paved and astonishingly straight, bashed uncompromisingly through woods and swamps and over rivers and chasms. He peered into collapsed villas with rain-worn mosaic floors and terra-cotta tiles scattered all around them in the tall grass. He passed crumbling aqueducts, roofless granaries, dry baths, entire empty towns slowly being picked apart by scavengers.

  It all seemed desperately sad, like the broken architecture of Heaven. The Romans had brought civilization to Britain. They’d brought apples and pears and glass and plumbing and fine pottery. They’d brought God and the written word. They gave Britain trade routes to the Continent and beyond, as far as India and China. The Romans brought peace too. Before they came, every man’s hand was at his neighbor’s throat.

  And then they were called back over the sea by their distant emperor, and the light went out. The secrets of civilization were lost and forgotten in the lengthening shadows. People scurried back to the old hill forts, which they barely remembered how to live in. Abandoned legions became tribes, and masterless legates became warlords. Britain went back to being a dark, fractious, divided place. A crackwork kingdom.

  And through that kingdom rode King Arthur, and wherever he rode, order and peace returned. He was the last light in the darkness.

  Collum chopped the heads off cow parsley with his sword. He chewed clover and sorrel to stop his stomach rumbling and picked at the peeling calluses on the palm of his sword hand. He stopped and prayed by the roadside. He snapped a thin branch off a tree and shoved it down the back of his armor in a desperate attempt to scratch his back. Gradually his horror at the events of the day began to give way to the boredom of the road. He told himself the man was just a villain, that was all. The world was full of villains, they were the darkness that King Arthur was driving out, which Collum was—possibly, hopefully—going to help him do. For an hour or two his whole world had wobbled on its axis, the incident in the meadow bespoke some deep chaos, deeper even than evil, from which his soul instinctively recoiled—but now the world was regaining its balance. He’d met an uncouth knight on the road, they fought, and Collum slew him, as any knight of the Round Table would have done. As God had willed it. And God would forgive him.

  It was a good story. It made him feel better. Stories were useful that way, they smoothed over the gaps and sharp edges of the world. There was no great mystery here, or if there was then there was no need for him to solve it. And if it wasn’t quite the whole story, well, it wasn’t the only lie he was going to tell when he got to Camelot.

  * * *

  • • •

  Collum could tell he was coming to a town because there were no more fallen branches under the trees. The locals gathered them all up for firewood. He found the town itself around sunset, a jumble of sprouting gardens and wattle-and-daub houses standing at odd angles to one another, as if a giant had thrown them as dice. It had an inn, too, a sturdy, respectable-looking building with an arched doorway and a sign painted with two crescent moons.

  A drunk was passed out on the grass outside, an absolute giant of a man, his greasy tunic riding up over his white belly. A couple of kids were throwing clods of mud at him.

  “Oi! Leave off!”

  Collum scowled at them. The children looked at one another and collectively made a calculation, correct as it turned out, that he wouldn’t actually chase them, and went back to clodding the drunk.

  He doubted he could afford a bed for the night, but he left his horse in the courtyard anyway and ducked into the hall. The innkeeper, a middle-aged man with a torch of red hair and the iron face of a jailer, sniffed at Collum’s northern accent but informed him that the village he had attained was called Ditchley, in the kingdom of Logres, and that Camelot was only ten miles to the south and east. Follow the river Brass and the trail of countless other naive, hopeful young men.

  Ten miles. After all this time, tomorrow would be the day. In a grand gesture Collum handed over a quarter of his life savings for a bed and a meal. He’d never stayed at an inn in his life before but he’d need a good rest, and after all, if things went right, if he did win himself a place, he would never have to worry about money again. The innkeeper lifted his chin toward a woman in a green smock who was scrubbing the floor.

  “Watch out for her, she’s a live one.”

  The woman winked at him.

  Upstairs, Collum took the opportunity to get out of his armor for the first time in a week. Like a lobster carefully molting its steel shell he removed all thirty-seven pieces, one by one, each with its own hinges and pins and buckles and fastenings, and piled them on a bed. There were a couple of replacement parts that didn’t quite match—right cuisse, left gardbrace, now scratched—but only a couple. (And now that missing fastening pin, too, dammit.) Collum traveled with a little hammer and a metal file to hammer out dents and smooth out nicks and dings. Etched on the inner face of each piece were the maker’s mark and the lioness of Brescia. There were few decent armorers in Britain.

  He dried each piece and rubbed it with mineral oil. If you left them too long, like the late Sir Chevron Or had, they got rusty and you had to roll them in a barrel of sand to scrape them clean. He cleaned and oiled his blade too—for a killing weapon swords were surprisingly sensitive. Even touching one bare-handed would leave fingerprints that could turn into rust spots. When he was done he let his hair down—like most knights he grew it shoulder length and then pinned it up under his helmet for extra padding. He washed his grubby hands and feet and face in a basin. Then, feeling almost human again, he went downstairs.

  The woman in the green smock placed a cup of ale and a plate of lamb stewed with onions and red wine in front him, and after that he couldn’t think about anything else for a long time. He ate till his stomach hurt. His damp clothes steamed in the warmth. He was full, he was safe, he was almost there.

  The sun was down, and the innkeeper prodded the fire to life. He argued with two customers and the woman over whether or not the big drunk in the gutter outside should be removed, and if so who should do it, and how, given how very big and drunk he was. Collum couldn’t help noticing the woman watching him, bold and unembarrassed. People were always interested in a man in armor. She said something and the others laughed. Her hair was cut very short, shorter than he’d ever seen a woman’s hair. Lice maybe. Or they shaved your head for adultery. Shave a cross on your head, cure for madness.

  He’d turned away and decided he’d be better off ignoring her for the rest of the night when she abruptly sat down across from him.

  “You a knight?”

  Her age was hard to guess. Her eyes were a curiously pale gray.

  “Not yet.”

  “I told them a real knight wouldn’t stay in a shithole like this. Where from?”

  “The Out Isles.” He had to clear his throat. Collum was out of practice at making conversation, not that he’d ever had much practice in the first place. “And yourself?”

  “Local girl.” She had a winsome, lopsided smile and a funny accent that didn’t sound local at all. “What happened to your face?”

  “Lost a fight with a hawthorn bush.”

  She snorted.

  “They won’t let you lie like that when you’re a knight. What’s this?”

  She reached across the table, so suddenly he flinched, and took the dead knight’s silver medal in her hand.

  “Medal.”

  “Obviously it’s a medal.” She weighed it in her palm. “Where’d you get it?”

  He’d already resolved never to tell anybody what happened with the knight in the meadow; in fact, he’d firmly resolved to drink some water, go upstairs, and get the best night of sleep he’d ever had. But now he found himself spilling everything: the challenge, the fight, the ugly words, the ugly end. It just came tumbling out, as if she were his best and oldest friend.

  He supposed he was lonely. He’d talked to two people in the last week, one of whom he’d killed. Her eyes were wonderfully large, and she had a way of looking at him as if he were the most interesting person she’d ever met.

  “Dark times,” she said. “I hope you buried him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t leave a body out like that. Spirits’ll take it. Owls, even.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Can’t have an owl running around in a knight’s body.”

  Collum agreed that one absolutely could not have owls running around in knights’ bodies.

  “His arms were three gold scepters and a chevron,” he said. “Do you know them?”

  She shrugged.

  “I can never keep track of that stuff.”

  “But here’s what really bothers me.” Collum stared into the fire. He’d called for ale because it felt like the kind of thing a knight would do, but he wasn’t used to it and now he felt woozy. “I don’t think that knight was trying to kill me. I think he was trying to make me kill him. I think he wanted to die.”

  The woman tapped her lips with a finger, thinking, her large eyes gleaming.

  “Of all the animals,” she said, “only man can feel a despair that is beyond his power to endure.”

  “God wouldn’t’ve sent him more than he could endure.”

  “I find your God is a great optimist when it comes to the question of how much people can endure. Can you read?”

  Your God. A pagan then. Collum felt like he’d begun this conversation with one person and now was having it with someone completely different, who was several times more intelligent than he was.

  “I can read.”

  “Just Latin? Or do you know your Beith-luis-nin?”

  “Just Latin.”

  Beith-luis-nin meant Ogham, the old writing of the druids. More pagan stuff. Each letter was supposed to be a tree: beith was a birch, luis was a rowan, nin was an ash, or something like that. Back on Mull the elders made you feel guilty if you didn’t learn it. Collum hadn’t. He was a good Christian, like King Arthur.

  Still he couldn’t help wanting this woman to like him. There was something terribly exciting about her—her quickness, her smile, that wonderfully attentive gaze…

  “Stay with me, Collum.” She snapped her fingers under his nose. “You’re off to Camelot tomorrow, yes?”

  An enormous iridescent beetle lit on her shoulder then flitted away again, so quick he wasn’t even quite sure he’d seen it. There was a cold smell, like winter woods.

  “I cherish the hope that—”

  “Yes, of course you do. Well, I can’t stop you. At least you can use a blade. Or stab somebody in the eye with it anyway.” She stood up as suddenly as she’d sat down. Whatever game they were playing, she’d gotten tired of it. “Just don’t waste any more time, you’re late as it is. The sword’s in the sea, and the last ship has sailed.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” he said, feeling stupid.

  “I know you don’t. I’m telling you now so that when you find out, you’ll know that I knew.”

  She took off her smock and dropped it on the table.

  “I quit,” she called to the innkeeper.

  Then she walked right out into the night. Collum stared at the open door.

  He supposed it was traditional for a knight errant like himself to be accosted by mysterious maidens. Though usually in the stories they had longer hair. And what did she say about the sword in the sea? And there was something else, something important that he’d forgotten the moment she’d said it. He took a swig of his sour ale. She was one of those vibrant people who seemed to be part of a more interesting story than he was, and when she left she took it with her and left him behind in the dreary margins. She, the damsel, was the hero, and he the foil, soon discarded and forgotten. He fingered the rough fabric of her abandoned smock. Stay with me, Collum.

  But that was it. He sat up straight. That was it. He’d never told her his name.

  The bench clattered over behind him as he got up and ran out into the courtyard, three-quarters drunk. The noise and light and heat of the inn shrank away to nothing. The woman was nowhere in sight. He jogged out into the wet road.

  He dithered frantically then picked a direction at random and set off at a brisk walk, past a looming barn, a well, a market square with a carpet of mashed onions and cabbage trampled flat. The cozy inn dwindled away behind him. He’d forgotten all about Camelot, now it seemed like the only thing that mattered was that he find the short-haired woman and receive whatever message she had for him. Adventure had come looking for him and like a fool he’d let it slip away!

  The rain started again. Somehow the road had left the houses behind, thinning down to two wheel ruts with a tall ruff of green grass sticking up between them. A loose-limbed hare lolloped lazily across the road. Bugs burred and trilled in the night around him. Maybe he’d made a mistake. Maybe she was an enchantress who’d lured him out here to do him mischief. The nape of his neck prickled. The world was coming undone again, like it had with the knight, just when he’d almost got it back together again. Why couldn’t it behave?

  Maybe she was a fairy. He stopped walking. This felt like fairy business. Collum swore under his breath and patted his thigh softly, but he’d left his sword back at the inn. Stupid. Stupid. He touched his medals—but she’d touched them, too, so were they cursed now? Fairies liked a bit of fun, but they played rough and didn’t care if their toys got broken. They’d been gods once, who’d shrunk and faded with the coming of Christ, and now they lurked in hollow hills and at the borders and edges of things, places even God seemed to forget about or else why wouldn’t He just get rid of them? They had their own world, too, the Otherworld, and if you put a foot wrong, on a thin place, you could fall right through into it and be trapped for a hundred years…