LITMIR.BIZ

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      But King Evan squinted to the left and shook off the languor and gossip that had marked the last hour of riding. He sat straight in his saddle, his shoulders square, his eyes narrowed to examine the dense tangle of briars and oak trees that shadowed the track ahead. Why should the forest of Gwenelleth intimidate him? He was King Evan, and this was his land.

      And just as the Duke of Greenwold, who had been riding in the rear, approached King Evan to suggest turning right (for nearby there was a sweet spring where they might water their horses, while forest water is of course tannic and bitter) a massive buck, well fatted and sporting antlers with at least eight points, crashed through the underbrush and leapt across the path.

      Well! That was an invitation no man could resist. They had no swift hounds with them, but that scarcely kept King Evan from signalling to Lord Fendale, who raised his horn and blew, avaunt, avaunt! And off they all sprang to the hunt, ploughing deep into the forest, leaving the laden pack animals and the poor squires behind.

      Cador rode with the king, in the vanguard of the knights, pressing their mounts hard. On they plunged, never minding the whip of branches across their faces. The buck’s tail teased them, flashing white as it flipped upwards with every nimble leap, only to disappear a moment later in the thick growth. Whenever they came to the merest opening in the trees, Cador would loose an arrow. Some missed, it is true, but once, twice, three times he landed a shaft in the beast’s hide, and every time the buck would bellow. Cador called for a short spear, for the king had only his lance – most unsuitable for the closeness of the forest – and no reply came. He turned in his saddle, and found that the two of them were alone; they had drawn far ahead of the other knights. Cador paused, but King Evan spurred his chestnut stallion so it leapt and Cador’s mount, Sleek, surged in response, as if it too couldn’t wait to catch the buck, and they were again in pursuit, the forest growing thicker around them.

      From far behind them came the sound of Lord Fendale’s horn, no longer the brazen avaunt but now the three-note call for succour. Someone had fallen. Cador wheeled his mount towards the noise, but King Evan hesitated.

      ‘My lord?’ Cador asked.

      ‘The buck,’ Evan said, his eyes on the undergrowth where already the buck had disappeared.

      ‘A knight must heed a request for aid.’ Cador nodded emphatically, his blond hair swinging around his chin.

      ‘If we must.’ King Evan sighed, still staring into the brush, his dark brows drawn together.

      They turned their horses and rode more slowly, no longer the reckless pace of pursuit, for their horses whuffed and snorted with fatigue. They rode a hunt in reverse, following the drops of blood back to where they’d been. Succour! sounded again, more urgent.

      When they emerged from the tangle of thorns and vines onto the trodden path, what a sight of gore and desolation they found. Three horses lay on their sides, bellies slit open from throat to tail; and what had been squires, half a dozen of them, lay scattered about: a leg here, an arm there, though plenty of pieces were missing, the forest coated with viscera and blood.

      ‘My God,’ the king said. The knights’ armour dotted the woods, dented, scratched, and gore-coated. ‘What evil happened here?’ He held the reins firm in his hand, for Hero shied away at the smell of blood. He looked about for a squire to whom he could hand the reins, so that he could get off his frisky mount and examine this scene sombrely, as a king ought. But there were no squires.

      Well. There was one. One squire and one donkey.

      King Evan swung himself down from Hero’s back. ‘What has happened here?’ He looked about at the savaged bodies, the bloody remains; he scanned the ranks of his soldiers and lords, all of them trembling, a few seeming green. These flowers of knighthood, these hallmarks of courage, made ill by the devastation.

      Swallowing back his own bile, Evan lifted his chin to the squire. ‘Well? What happened?’

      ‘The others went ahead, sire.’ The poor squire trembled as he spoke. ‘I waited behind that rise.’ He pointed back up the track. ‘To, um, relieve, that is, release my bowels. I heard such terrible screeching … I ran to the crest and saw a huge lizard, a massive snake, but with legs. It had a horse in its mouth, and with one flick of its neck it broke the horse’s back and swallowed the carcass, and it had a squire clutched in each claw. I couldn’t watch. I ran. And it was all I could do to grab the donkey’s halter when he, too, fled for safety.’

      The knights grumbled and cursed the imagination of foolish boys. But Cador waded through the gore and found claw marks scored deep into the bark of an oak and a shred of scaly flesh. He picked it up with the tip of his sword. Even at arm’s length, he could smell its foetid odour, the decay it embodied. The scales glistened, green and silver. With much trepidation, and a prayer sent up to the Holy Lord, Cador reached out and touched the flesh – it was cool and slippery. The other knights gasped as he returned to their midst and flung the serpent’s scales to the forest floor. ‘The boy tells the truth.’

      There were those who wanted to ride right back out of that forest. But King Evan, say what you want of him, has always had a sense of when a score must be settled. And he declared that the blood of their squires and packhorses would be avenged and this serpent destroyed.

      They buried the tattered remains of their squires beneath the trees, set the surviving squire to cleaning the gore-splattered armour and built a massive fire around which they sat as the sun sank low.

      ‘I have studied the piece of flesh and noted the pattern of the scales,’ said the most learned knight among them. He pointed with the tip of his sword at the scrap that Cador had recovered. It glinted malevolently in the firelight. ‘See how they overlap here? The green with the silver? Not at all like your common snake. And not like a dragon. No, my lords, I believe it is a wyvern that we are fighting.’ He paused and around the fire eyes widened and more than one knight tried to swallow in a throat gone dry. ‘They were the few serpents who escaped the Lord God’s curse in Eden, and so they are the snakes who kept their legs. They are more clever than a dragon and hungrier than any snake.’

      ‘Terrible creatures,’ said Lord Fendale, who was not nearly so learned. ‘Their breath is poisonous.’

      ‘As is their blood,’ said the Duke of Greenwold, even less learned than the other two. ‘It burns.’ He leaned towards the fire, holding his palms out, for the evening had turned chill.

      ‘Enough,’ said King Evan, who knew nothing of wyverns, but plenty about how a man can turn cowardly when darkness settles and stories start. He eyed the flames. ‘It is a foul beast and we will rid my kingdom of its filth. Our squires were young and untried. They were no match for the wiles of such a beast. Tomorrow we will show the serpent true knights.’ He glanced around at the men who circled the fire, his blue eyes settling on each in turn, just for a moment, before resting longer on Cador. Still mud-splattered from their chase of the buck, his blond hair tousled by the wind, the young knight seemed to have lost the softness of youth that he had when they set out from Winchester. The firelight picked out the hollows of his cheeks, the angles of his jaw.

      At length, he lifted his eyes and met his king’s gaze. ‘Indeed we will, my liege.’

      When morning dawned, Lord Fendale and the Duke of Greenwold agreed to search for the wyvern’s lair. Cador begged leave of the king, saying he wanted to offer prayers before the fight. King Evan granted him leave and told him not to ride too far. Cador donned a shirt of light mail over a jacket of boiled leather. He set his short spear in its holder, strapped his shield behind the saddle, and buckled his helm atop his head. This preparation was all the more difficult without a squire, but one cannot be too prepared when a wyvern is lurking. With his sword at his side and Sleek refreshed by a night’s rest in the glade, Cador looked a handsome knight. He rode at a gentle pace until he was some distance from the others and spurred the horse on. For it wasn’t prayer that Cador sought, but yesterday’s buck. All night he’d worried – not about the wyvern, but about the creature who might still be suffering because of his poor aim.

      Who says

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