He looked tiny next to the big men of the party, broad-shouldered Bedivere and towering Constantine, whose armor was engraved and enameled and fire-gilded to within an inch of its life. Constantine’s arms were ten black birds—Cornish choughs—and the surface of his armor was alive with even more of them, engraved, with gold accents, as if they’d taken flight from his shield and alighted on his person.

  Scipio wore only light scale and carried an oval shield with three arrows and a golden boar on it. Collum felt suitably noble and heroic in his own new armor. Its plate was thicker than his old one but it fit better, and hung on him better, so that it felt lighter. They brought no squires or bearers; they would build their own firepits this time. The world was wrapped in mist, the sun and sky smothered and buried in it miles deep.

  Nimue was dressed practically, in black boots and a gray dress with a skirt big enough that she could tuck it under her legs as she rode. No witch’s robes for her. Collum hadn’t seen her since the night before his ordeal.

  “Thank you for the shilling,” he said. “You were right, it did come in handy.” He couldn’t guess within a thousand miles what she thought of him. He wondered if she’d known everything already, that night in the courtyard.

  “I hope you spent it wisely.”

  “I gave it to a lady made of stone, so she would let me jump down a well.”

  Her bold eyebrows arched.

  “I hope it was worth it.”

  “If you trust me a little more now,” he said gallantly, “then it was worth it.”

  Nimue didn’t answer that but touched his arm and went forward to talk to Bedivere. God’s holy bones, she was beautiful. He hoped he hadn’t drooled too much.

  After a short prayer they wound their way down through the castle grounds quietly, skirting the gardens and the tiltyard, the pond and the deer park. The air smelled like wet bark, and the mist was so thick that Collum couldn’t even see the end of the castle gardens—the rows of squash and peas and cabbage and turnips led off into nothingness. They filed out through the Gate of Three Queens, crossed the Brass, and headed north along a dirt road that after a couple of miles joined up with the Fosse Way. But Bedivere didn’t follow the old Roman road, instead he led them straight across it and through a gap in a hedge into the damp fields on the far side.

  By midmorning the fog had burned away and they stopped in a ragged field, unmown and ungrazed, where a ring of old standing stones loitered. A man was waiting there with a cow, and Nimue led it into the circle and cut its throat and daubed each of their foreheads with the blood. Constantine made a face when she got to him, and Dagonet flinched, but nobody declined.

  “For luck,” she said. “Be glad it was just a cow, Scipio wanted to sacrifice Sir Melehan.”

  They kept off the main roads, sticking to the old paths, ragged ways that wound through fields, past old farmland and the edge of the Blackash Woods, the great oaks at maximum late-summer green. They circled the lonely encampment of a solitary charcoal burner, the ground around it blackened and smoking like the entrance to Hell.

  Around noon the second day they crossed a river where it fanned out and flowed an inch deep over dark brown pebbles, chattering loudly but barely wetting the horses’ hooves. A thready goat track through shoulder-high bracken took them into the cool, green, rolling uplands of Sorelois. From the peak of a hill they looked down on a flat, dark lake where a mass of men and horses milled around on the shore, forty or fifty of them, weapons glinting dully in the summer sun.

  “Ours?” Collum asked.

  Bedivere shook his head. “Look at the shields.”

  “And no helmets.” Dinadan knocked on his own with his knuckles. “Those aren’t Britons. That’s a Saxon warband.”

  Collum had never seen Saxons before, not in the flesh. They didn’t wear braids after all.

  “What are they doing this far west?”

  “Having a drink and a piss, it looks like,” Bedivere said.

  “They must be part of Mordred’s gang,” Dinadan said. “Their employer having died, they’ll be collecting their salary from the populace in the form of rape and pillage.”

  “God’s hair.” Bedivere stared at them so intently that Collum wondered if he was actually considering taking them on.

  Finally he shook his head.

  “Not our fight,” the old knight said. “We’re hunting God, not Saxons.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day the wind became steady and relentless, bending the trees and whistling in the gaps in their armor and hissing through fields of wheat as women tied it into sheaves. The blue sky was full of foolish white swashes of cloud. They flushed a couple of meaty pheasants which took lumbering flight, clapping their wings together. The land was crawling with Saxons—Collum wasn’t sure if they were the same ones or different, but they had to divert twice more to avoid them. So far their grand quest was worryingly aimless and furtive.

  Palomides spotted the ruins of an old Roman gold mine.

  “See where they ran aqueducts from higher ground.” He pointed to a couple of decapitated columns barely visible above the shrubbery. “They brought in water at high pressure to blast away the topsoil and lay bare the ore.”

  It was hard to believe such things had ever been possible, or ever could be again.

  They came to a grand estate set all by itself in the middle of the fields, surrounded by a high wall. They entered through an iron gate that got stuck in the dry grass—it must have been years since it was opened. Inside was a pleasure garden of tall trees, neatly trimmed bushes, and an immense tidily kept lawn. The walls kept out that ceaseless wind, though it still pushed at the tops of the trees.

  Along one edge of the lawn stood seven knights, motionless, like chess pieces waiting to be put in play. The knights’ armors and surcoats were all different colors, arranged like a rainbow from red to violet. Beside them a herald carried a standard bearing a silver key on a field of black.

  Only now did Collum feel for the first time like they were really on a quest. Till then it had felt just a little like playacting, striking heroic poses as they wandered an empty world to no particular purpose. But now the game was afoot.

  The Red Knight stepped forward. Bedivere dismounted and crossed the lawn to confer with him. Somewhere a yellowhammer called in the silence: a-little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese.

  “It’s a tournament,” Bedivere said, when he returned. “Joust and then a mêlée.”

  “Terms?” Palomides said.

  “The joust is three passes, mêlée is sword and shield only. Rights of way observed, no trampling, no blows from behind, no striking a helmetless knight.”

  “Should we ask permission before we fart?” Scipio said.

  “No farting,” Dinadan said.

  “I must say, it’s all very civilized!” Constantine had given in to boyish excitement. “I don’t remember even Galahad getting anything like this, do you, Dagonet?”

  “Galahad’s dead,” said Dagonet.

  Bedivere informed the rainbow knights that their challenge was accepted, and immediately the place sprang to life. Grooms in black-and-white livery appeared leading horses. Servants set up a table and laid out food: cold pheasant and lamb and meatballs in aspic and dark rye bread and pyramids of apples, plus a barrel of red wine. Constantine sampled it.

  “Very civilized.”

  Nimue kept to herself, nibbling nervously at some bread and butter.

  “Any advice?” Collum asked. “On matters magical or supernatural?”

  She popped the rest of the bread in her mouth and brushed the crumbs off her hands.

  “We’re past advice,” she said with her mouth full. “At this point there aren’t really any choices left at all. We’re taking our cues directly from God now. How are you in the tilt?”

  “Fair to middling.”

  She swallowed.

  “Well, full marks for honesty.”

  “It’s often considered a virtue.”

  “Might give you a tactical advantage. God does look kindly on virtue. Collum, you do realize you have to win this?” He saw for the first time how worried she was. Her lips were pale. Nimue liked to be in control, she wasn’t cut out to be a spectator. “There’s no choice about that either. This quest could end right here, today.”

  Collum nodded. He wasn’t hearing “I believe in you” or “it’s all going to be all right,” but he’d already gathered that Nimue didn’t care much for empty words. For a wild moment he thought of begging her for a favor to wear in battle, but either his courage failed him or common sense got the better of him.

  “You could pray for us,” he said.

  “I’ll pray for you.”

  But she didn’t look any less nervous.

  Bedivere trotted to the head of the lists, his broad armored shoulders striped steel and gold with beams from the sun on his chest. At the far end of the field, a hundred yards away, a knight rode out to face him, the yellow one; his horse wore yellow barding to match. The two standards hung limply in the still air, Camelot’s at one end of the tilt and the silver key at the other. Everything was silent as a dream.

  Bedivere saluted his opponent and barked a quiet hya! at his horse. He shot away down the field, a narrow green road with no turnings, the point of his great yew lance up at an angle, his horse accelerating smoothly into a gallop, the cheeks of its great shiny rump working, big hooves kicking up grass and beating bass thumps on the ground in the quiet. Collum’s stomach tightened and the knights sent up a thin cheer.

  Both lances dropped into line and a sharp crack announced the impact. Bedivere’s point hit his opponent’s shield, but the Yellow Knight shrugged it off while his own lance took Bedivere in the chest, bent and shattered, sending a spectacular fountain of spinning splinters as high as the treetops. Bedivere swayed backward perilously but kept his seat.

  He would be judged the loser in that exchange. Tournament jousting was really just a game, which was one of the reasons Collum always had trouble taking it seriously. The object was to break your lance against your opponent, the way the Yellow Knight had done, for which you were awarded points. Further points could be awarded for damaging the other knight’s shield or armor, for knocking him off his horse, or for knocking down his horse completely. Likewise you could lose points for breaking your shaft too close to the tip, or touching the barrier with your horse’s rump, or losing your helmet or your stirrups or your lance, or hitting your opponent below the waist. The judges would add up the totals and declare a winner.

  Bedivere managed a tie in the third and final pass by breaking his lance against his opponent’s helm, a difficult blow that earned him extra points. His duty done, he doffed his helm and his gauntlets and rubbed his face and ruefully accepted everybody’s congratulations and mockery while attendants rushed out to clean up the broken wood and replace the divots.

  Constantine was ungainly on a horse, and he looked like far too large a target, but his innings ended early when he took the Red Knight down and his horse with him. Palomides, as natural in the saddle as a centaur, the gilded plates of his armor flashing in the sun, unhorsed the Blue Knight spectacularly on his third pass. By contrast, Scipio was not only knocked down by the Green Knight, his foot caught in the stirrup and his horse dragged him half the length of the field. When he finally shook himself free, miraculously uninjured, he got to his feet and bowed to torrents of imaginary applause.

  Collum knew he was in for his own measure of humiliation. In spite of all his practice as the Knight of the Fountain, he still was not a Camelot-caliber jouster. On his first pass, buoyed up by a wild last-minute surge of confidence, he aimed for his opponent’s forehead like Bedivere had and missed by at least a foot, the shaft bouncing juddering off the man’s shoulder. It was only by sheer good fortune that the Violet Knight missed his mark as well. From the far end, he heard the other knights laughing and somebody, Scipio probably, made a convincing sheep’s baaaaah. On the second pass Collum panicked completely and his mind emptied, whereupon his training took over and he shattered his lance satisfyingly on the other man’s shield. Point to Camelot. It seemed both wrong and undeniably true that he wanted to do well to find the Holy Lance and save Britain but equally as much he wanted to impress Nimue.

  Nothing daunted, he attempted the same difficult helmet strike again on the third pass with exactly the same result, except that this time his opponent didn’t miss but landed a solid hit on his own shield. That gave him an even outcome overall, like Bedivere, unless he’d scored it wrong. When he got his helm off, Dinadan clapped him on the shoulder.

  “At least you didn’t fart.”

  Dagonet was last in line but he refused to joust, so it was decided that Palomides would joust a second time, this time with the Indigo Knight as his opponent. The afternoon had become hot in the walled garden, but the sun was dropping, promising relief before too long. After the most perfunctory of salutes they both shook their reins and surged forward in perfect synchronicity toward each other, mirror images, a stone dropping toward its reflection in a pond.

  Then the Saracen’s lance was spinning end over end in the air. Indigo’s point had taken him full in the chest and laid him out flat. Collum wouldn’t have believed it. Palomides jounced once or twice in the saddle like a rag doll, then slumped sideways to the ground, stunned. His riderless horse cantered on, looking relieved to get away while it still could.

  The Indigo Knight finished up at Camelot’s end, patted his horse’s neck, and flipped the end of his broken lance casually to a servant. Scipio immediately strode up and challenged him to another pass, but he didn’t respond, just rode off back to join the rest of the rainbow.

  Scipio watched him go, hands on his hips.

  “I am going to mêlée the shit out of that fellow,” he said.

  After the joust Camelot held a narrow lead of just one point, but the mêlée was more Collum’s thing—nothing cute or clever, just proper scrapping. You want to touch the barrier with your rump? Go right ahead. The seven knights of Camelot lined up mounted along one edge of the field. Collum was second from the left, matched up against the knight in orange, who’d knocked Scipio out of the saddle. He was shorter and broader than the others, a bandy-armed brawler, and he wore an old-fashioned bucket helm with a sinister chevron-shaped eye-slit.

  Collum bent forward and whispered a few words of encouragement to his horse. A mêlée was rough on horses, who didn’t like having their ears bumped and sharp objects waved around their heads. He tried not to think about what hung in the balance. At the far end of the line Bedivere raised his sword.

  “Camelot!”

  And the knights answered from deep in their chests: “Camelot!”

  They trotted forward across the cooling green, the sun behind them, long shadows racing out ahead. Collum drew his sword, the ancient blade he’d dragged up from the world in the well, and held it low and to his left, across his body, a guard that looked awkward but kept his options open and his intentions unclear. It also kept his sword clear of his horse’s head; one’s first victim in mounted fencing was often one’s own mount. Discreetly he slipped his right foot out of its stirrup.

  You had to work fast in a fight like this because blows from horseback landed twice as hard as they did on foot, and you wanted to make sure yours landed first. At the last moment Sir Orange surged forward just a step quicker than Collum expected, but the exhilaration of the fight was like a magic draught that slowed time down around him. He slid his sword sidewise under Orange’s thrusting point, under the man’s armpit, while with his free right foot he deftly kicked Orange’s left foot out of its stirrup. Grunting with the effort, Collum grabbed him by the armored crotch with his free hand and heaved him bodily out of the saddle.

  The Orange Knight hit the ground on his back with a mighty clatter. He tried to rise but Collum smashed him down with his sword, again and again, guiding his horse in a tight circle with his knees, raining strikes on his head and shoulders while Orange tried to protect himself with one hand and grope for his dropped sword with the other. With all the leverage and momentum and unfairness of a mounted man beating an unmounted one, Collum hoisted his blade over his head with both hands and brought it down on the man’s trapezius. The Orange Knight burst apart.

  It happened in a heartbeat: man and armor were gone, and in their place a dozen or so birds went fluttering up and away around Collum in a little flock. Doves maybe, all white except for one gray one. They flapped up into the sky, clear of the struggling, thrashing humans below them.

  He didn’t even have time to be surprised. That’s got to be worth a point or two, was all he thought.

  For the first time Collum heard the sounds of the fight all around him, the shouts and curses and the sound of metal sliding on metal like giant shears. You could see the occasional lively spark when two swords met. Dagonet and Constantine were down—and there went Scipio, too—but the other side was down to four men, too, then three as Dinadan disarmed the Yellow Knight. The defeated knight simply bowed to him, knelt on the grass, placed his palms together, and became a flock of doves, which circled the field once then settled in the lower branches of a tree to watch.

  But there was a problem, and it was Sir Indigo. Bedivere was dueling him now, with a sword instead of his signature hammer—house rules—and it was obvious that Palomides’s loss in the tilt was not a fluke. It was an incredible sight: Bedivere was broader and two or three inches taller, and his massive ironbound shield was like a wall between them, but the Indigo Knight was striking him at will while Bedivere blundered after him like a blindfolded child in a party game. Finally—and to all appearances he could’ve done it at any time—the knight pirouetted and struck him with an overhand blow, two-handed, the hardest cut in the swordsman’s arsenal. It was enough to dent Bedivere’s helm. He fell down backward.