The Court Beneath Phil Kelly A lone figure trudged towards Castle Couronne, stopping for a moment to examine his reflection in the steel of his sword. The face reflected in the blade was the dirt-streaked mask of a beggar. Grimacing, the knight tried to wash off the worst of the dirt in a puddle by the side of the road. A cart towed by a pair of malnourished mules rumbled past, splashing yet more filth onto his already stained surcoat. The knight looked up at the skies and sighed deeply before returning to his reflection. If anything he had made the scarecrow in the steel look worse. The exposed streaks of pale flesh only served to accentuate the layers of filth he had accrued over the long years of his quest. Gone for a five-year and nothing to show for it. Well, nothing but some ugly scars, a few loose teeth and a bad case of ringworm, that was. His money-purse had been stolen long ago, and his noble steed lost to the forest two years previously. He still had his sword, at least – he’d paid good silver for it to be chained to his wrist as a gesture of commitment – and his shield was still intact, more or less. Yet the fact remained that here he was, about to address the Grand Court of Couronne whilst looking little better than a pauper’s arse. He smelt the part, too; the powdered harpies of the Grand Court were going to eat him alive. No matter that Bretonnia had been rid of many a monster since his travels began. He had met with prophets and ghosts alike on his travels; had even fought alongside the Green Knight himself at one point. The courtiers cared not for hollow boasts, however. Without proof of his victories they were like to dismiss such claims as the ravings of a madman. Shaking his head, the knight trudged on. There was little choice. An army of the dead was said to be shambling towards the peasant villages to the north, the renegade sorcerer Myldeon adding to their number with every corpse-pit he passed. Though they were loath to admit it, the Grand Court had made a powerful enemy the day they chased Myldeon from their ranks for practising the forbidden arts. The knight whispered a quiet oath to the Lady that the necromancer would be brought to justice before he had raised half the kingdom from their graves. Scowling at the wilful incompetence of Bretonnia’s gentry, the knight made his way into the shadow of the crenellated monstrosity known as Castle Couronne. The towering edifice looked as if the father of giants had knocked down three perfectly good fortresses and piled them one atop another before employing a mad architect to fortify the results beyond all reason. Gilded spires jutted out from precarious sub-mansions like fungi, gargoyles leered from stone kennels, towers sprouted from walls buttressed with twisted oak trees. Murder-holes and arrow slits perforated every crooked wall from top to bottom, and tattered pennants fluttered from the trebuchets and mangonels cresting its many towers. A pair of majestic stone dracogryphs guarded a broad bridge over a moat of bubbling pitch. It was a lunatic king’s fantasy groaning in the wind, a wyrdstone-tainted nightmare made real. For the knight, it was home. Two densely muscled men-at-arms sidled out of the shadows of the gatehouse to bar his way, their hook-ended polearms thrust towards his face. Even over the stench of the moat he could smell the wine on their breath – Alabier Red, and a bad year at that. One of the guardsmen had an eye missing, replaced with a rusting nugget of ironstone. The other had a smile that had been crudely widened by a blade, a common punishment for the low-born who laughed out of turn. ‘Let me pass, in the name of my father. In the name of the king,’ said the knight, drawing himself up to his full height as he approached the guards. Their polearms did not move an inch, each hovering a hand’s breadth from his face. Shaking his head, the knight grabbed his gauntlet in his teeth and pulled his sword hand free, wiping the worst of the muck from the battered face of his shield and flicking it into the bubbling pitch of the moat. The gesture revealed a lion rampant on a field of blue and red. It had seen far better days, but it was undeniably the royal heraldry of Couronne. A tense moment passed. As one, the men-at-arms kneeled, their polearms lifted and their eyes cast down. Sir Louen of Couronne took a deep breath and marched inside. A fine mist of rain fell as Louen and Brocard the Bold rode their noble steeds along the winding road. Castle Couronne dwindled in the distance behind them. Some twenty metres behind the two Bretonnian lords was a single lance of knights, their brightly-coloured pennants slicked flat with damp. Leather-patched squires rode behind them in sodden silence. It would have been extremely charitable to call it an army. It was barely even an escort. ‘Sixteen swords, Brocard. Sixteen,’ said Louen, despondently. ‘At least his lordship gave you a good horse, Louen,’ replied Brocard, frowning as he flicked rainwater from the immaculate steel unicorn that curved over his left shoulder. ‘Ancient or not, you know how the man loves his purebreds.’ ‘And the humiliation to go with it. How low the flame of chivalry has burned,’ muttered Louen into his tangled beard, ‘if but sixteen souls can be roused to defend the land.’ ‘Lady’s sake, don’t be so dramatic, Louen,’ said Brocard, fixing him with a reproachful glance from his famously mismatched eyes. One was blue, one green; their colours were echoed upon his personal heraldry and the caparison of his mighty charger. ‘What did you expect, turning up after five years with nothing to show for your efforts besides a beggar’s plea?’ he said. ‘If you ask me you were lucky to get more than a boot up the backside. And if the necromancer has raised as many as you say, it’s a wonder you rallied anyone at all.’ ‘Why, thanks. When did you become such a bloody realist?’ Brocard’s easy smile disappeared in an instant. Louen decided not to press the matter. The rain pattered down as they rode on in silence, passing the burnt-out windmills and tumbledown chapels that typified the Marches of Couronne. Autumn had the twisted trees of the land in its grasp, and rotting mulch covered the sides of the dirt track. Every mile or so a twisted body lay by the side of the path, rainwater gathering in its eye sockets. Careless, thought Louen. They should have been buried face down, crow’s feet in the mouth, as was the proper custom. His father had an infamous distrust of superstition, and Louen knew enough to see it for the dangerous indulgence it truly was. No wonder Myldeon had amassed such a throng. Thunderclouds mustered on the horizon. A lone magpie croaked from its perch atop a rusting thief-cage, half-heartedly pecking at the wet meat of its occupant. As the sun passed high overhead, Louen eased his horse into a slow trot. Brocard rode alongside him, returned from counsel with the knights in the lance behind. They travelled in silence for a few minutes more. ‘A lot can happen in five years, Louen,’ said Brocard, suddenly. ‘What’s that?’ asked Louen, jolted from thoughts of the conflict to come. ‘I said, a lot has happened since you’ve been gone.’ ‘I feared as much. Not good news, either, judging by your demeanour.’ ‘No, Louen,’ replied Brocard. ‘Sadly not. We have little enough of that these days.’ ‘Care to tell me about it?’ Brocard looked back over his shoulder at the fifteen knights riding behind them, then met Louen’s gaze. ‘In a while, perhaps,’ he sighed. They rode onwards for a few hours more, Louen moving up and down the column talking to the men he would soon be fighting alongside. As the sun began to sink, a moss-covered bridge forced them to cross a trickling brook in single file. Before the rest of the knights could catch up, Louen spurred his steed to catch up with Brocard’s heavily-armoured stallion. ‘You’ve changed, old friend,’ said Louen, riding close. ‘You noticed,’ said Brocard, bitterly. ‘It’s bad, then?’ ‘Yes,’ said the knight, his magnificent armour clinking as he slumped in the saddle, head hung. He held his gauntlet to his face, thumb and finger rubbing his eyes. ‘It’s really bad,’ he said, voice barely audible over the rain. ‘Eleanor?’ ‘No. Our son.’ ‘Landuin? Bright lad.’ ‘Too bright,’ said Brocard, his voice cracking. ‘He was… He was Taken, Louen.’ ‘What?’ said Louen, turning in his saddle with a jerk. ‘Landuin was… Really?’ Brocard’s face twisted into a knot of unresolved grief. ‘His bed was empty and the sheets were cold as ice. He was Taken. I won’t see him again.’ The knight’s expression was so tragic that Louen felt his gut churn hollow. ‘Well,’ said Louen, not knowing what else to say, ‘I’ll be damned.’ ‘No, my friend,’ said Brocard, wiping his eyes. ‘It’s not you that’s damned.’ The knights rose at dawn, their squires buckling their ornate suits of armour plate by plate. Their heavily-muscled horses churned the rich earth, nervous despite their impeccable breeding. Louen shook out the last shreds of a troubling dream and parted the boughs of his makeshift bivouac, dislodging a silver curtain of dewdrops and a fat-bodied spider in the process. Frowning, he watched the knights make ready. ‘Sixteen,’ he sighed to himself, pulling his armour on piece by tarnished piece. ‘A lance of ten-and-seven in total, with a rusting tip at that.’ The cold of the earth had sunk into the core of his bones. Five years of this, he thought, and it never gets easier. A squire approached him, offering a bowl of hot rabbit gruel from the campfire. Louen waved it away. ‘Your need is greater,’ he said with a weary smile, ‘a growing lad like you. Though if you’ve a platter of smoked bacon and a feather-stuffed blanket behind your back, I’ll take them off your hands.’ He earned a shy half-smile in response before the squire took his leave, eyes averted. The smell the stew left hanging in the damp air was delicious, and Louen’s empty stomach growled low. Taking his longknife from its scabbard, he sliced off a piece of edible fungus from a nearby tree and chewed it hard, hoping to appease his gut. One day I’ll sleep in a bed again, he promised himself, perhaps with a woman or two to warm it. And on that day I’ll eat rabbit stew, stuffed swan, roast boar, and more besides. Today, though, I’ll like as not be up to my armpits in corpses by lunchtime. Still, the deed needs done. The knight rubbed his aching knees, blinking the sleep out of his eyes as he twisted his head from one side to the other with a series of dull cracks. Something strange hung in the air, a feeling of disquiet more than anything tangible. He sniffed, his senses slowly waking up. There it was; the faintest whiff of rotten flesh, carried on the wind. ‘I fear they’re coming to us, my friend,’ said Brocard, his spurs clinking as he strode up to Louen’s makeshift bivouac. The big knight’s handsome features were troubled. ‘You’d better say your devotions now, if you still want to make the charge.’ Louen nodded silently, taking his friend’s hand as he got to his feet. ‘Brocard,’ he said, ‘thank you for this. I’ll repay you if I can.’ ‘It’s for the land, Louen. No need to speak of debt.’ ‘As you say, old friend,’ said Louen. ‘Look for the single living man amongst the dead. Take the lance straight for him, squires to each side. Kill him true, and the numbers of the foe are of little import.’ ‘Aye, I hear you. The necromancer – spitted like a boar.’ ‘Make sure of it.’ Combing his beard with his fingers, Louen took his leave from Brocard and knelt by his horse, saying a quiet prayer to the Lady. He allowed himself a brief moment’s peace before straightening his tunic and striding towards the embroidered tents that dotted the clearing. ‘Knights of Couronne,’ he called out, pushing his way through dripping branches. ‘I bid you good day!’ He was greeted by a rough chorus of grunts and half-hearted greetings from the knights strapping on the last of their armour. A scattered handful stood to attention, their sword hilts raised in salute. ‘Today we draw blades together,’ called out Louen, drawing his sword from its scabbard. ‘Today we fight for the land once more.’ He paced around the edge of the clearing, looking each of the knights in the eye one by one. A few of them nodded their respect as he passed. ‘Today we reclaim our realm from the kingdom of death,’ said Louen, eyes glowering. ‘Breathe it, I bid you – it’s there. Smell it. That’s the taint of death, my friends. The stink of dark magic.’ He paused for a moment, his back to the rest of them as he scowled out across the countryside. Sure enough, there was movement in the fields below. ‘It seeps across the lands, polluting our rivers, choking our villages, spreading like a plague. And there is nothing to stop it.’ He paused, spinning on his heel to face them. ‘Nothing but the sons of Couronne!’ he roared. A ragged cheer went up from the assembled knights as they gathered in front of Louen in loose groups. ‘Today we show the Lady we are worthy of her favour!’ shouted Louen. ‘Today we hunt, and today we kill!’ His men cheered, raising their swords to the sky in salute. Louen raised his sword in both hands, his eyes wild. ‘Death to the villain, Myldeon!’ ‘Death!’ called out Brocard. ‘Death!’ The knights joined the morbid chant, shouting and clashing their swords upon their shields until rain shook from the trees. ‘Lady, we beseech thee!’ shouted Louen over the warcry of his men. ‘Fair goddess of Bretonnia, guide our blades and strengthen our shields! Give us your blessing that we might scour the land of the traitor and the dead! Watch over us as we ride!’ Stepping onto his stirrup, Louen heaved himself into the saddle of his horse, tendrils of morning mist swirling in his wake. ‘To war!’ The knights roared in response, mounting up with practised ease and riding downhill after Louen with heraldic pennants streaming. They formed up into a lance three abreast before cresting a sloped ridge. The misty hillsides below stretched away for miles. A sea of brown-grey bodies stumbled through the fields towards them, their numbers enough to make a lesser man faint. A lake glimmered silver in the valley at their back, potentially trapping them if all went well. Yet there were thousands of corpse-things spreading out across the landscape. Less than half a mile distant was an ancient barrow, the pallid form of the necromancer atop its lintel. Arrayed around him was a bodyguard of undead knights, their heraldry and posture somehow prideful even in death. Louen’s frown deepened. Even Myldeon’s elite had them outnumbered three to one. The low moans of the dead carried over the pounding of hooves as the knights pushed their mounts to the gallop. Mounted squires fanned out on either side to prevent their masters being flanked, but Louen knew in his heart that there was no way they could succeed against such untold numbers. He whispered a quick prayer to the Lady nevertheless, and spurred his mount to full speed. A single brass horn sounded in the morning air just as the wedge of Bretonnian knights hit the undead throng like a hunting spear thrust into an unprotected gut. It plunged deep into their ranks, splashing black blood and rotten flesh with the violence of the impact. The sheer momentum of the charge was a weapon in its own right. As the cavalry galloped onwards the dead were flung aside or trampled by the dozen. The knights plunged their lances through chests, throats, arms, heads, their wielders revelling in the power of their charge and the fact that their lances were still holding true against such meagre opposition. One after another the flesh-things came apart. Hundreds of the living corpses were put down before the Bretonnians had slowed at all. But slow they did. Such was the success of the initial charge that the squires flanking their knightly lords had long been left behind. Louen could see no end to the number of mottled bodies pressing in against them. One by one, the lances of Couronne’s finest were dragged from their hands by the corpses impaled upon them. Swords drawn, the knights hacked and kicked at the dead men clutching at them, fighting hard to reach the necromancer on the barrow ahead. Cold hands grasped at caparisons, uneven teeth sank into the legs of man and horse alike. The low moaning of the horde was cut through with shouts of rage and the panicked whinny of bloodied horses. To the left, Louen saw Red Rebelond pulled from the saddle, then Guido the Gut alongside him, his warhammer falling from lifeless hands. Sir Heverte’s warhorse, Steelshoe, went down under the weight of a dozen of the throng, trapping his master beneath him. Heverte’s unicorn helm was torn off, and Louen saw dead fingers sink into the proud knight’s face. His expression grim, Louen cast around, stabbing and slashing at the gormless creatures below as he searched frantically for the robed figure that would be controlling the horde. The barrow top was empty. ‘Louen!’ shouted Brocard. ‘Over here!’ Far ahead, his friend’s silvered armour glinted in the morning sun. Mace flashing, Brocard was determinedly smashing his way towards a gaunt and hunchbacked figure. The pale warlock was surrounded by his skeletal men-at-arms, long-dead knights formed up in a grotesque mockery of an honour guard. Their ancient blades rained blows upon Brocard’s shield and stabbed at his rune-inscribed breastplate, but they had little effect. Brocard was laughing manically, smashing skulls and ribcages with each sweep of his eagle-headed mace. Yet for all his bravado he was quickly becoming surrounded by the necromancer’s undead elite. The Lady must be proud, thought Louen, but he’s alone, and in over his head. Louen spurred his horse on, the steed stamping and trampling its way through the living dead towards the other knight. Louen cut away arms and hands wherever one of the stinking creatures gained purchase on his horse’s armour. Ignoring Brocard’s plight for a moment, he hacked and gouged his way through the throng where it was thinnest. Suddenly there were no more of the creatures in front of Louen. His warhorse burst out of the churned mud by the side of the lake. He veered right and rode hard along the bank, plunging back into the battle as close to the barrow as possible. His blade met bone again and again, his warhorse’s flailing hooves adding to the tally as they caved in skulls and splintered ribcages. Before long Louen had carved a path so deep that the skeletal knights had pressed in all around. Incredibly, Brocard had fought his way to the shrivelled necromancer retreating to the side of the lake. The knight bellowed a wordless challenge, pointing his mace at Myldeon. In response, the mage pointed a crooked finger at him and narrowed his eyes. A beam of black light flashed, and Brocard was flung back across the corpses of the slain, thick smoke streaming from his armour. The smell of roasted meat hung in the air. Louen gave an involuntary cry as his horse was slowly pulled down by the sheer weight of the dead surrounding him. Mounting the saddle, he turned his sidelong fall into a leap, barrelling into the host of skeletal knights and knocking three of them to the ground before scrabbling to his feet. He was on the verge of frenzy as he elbowed and punched through the moss-covered bones of the wights, desperate to reach Brocard’s side. Terror lent him strength. He barged his way through the ranks to find his companion’s silvered armour smouldering, the body within curled like a burnt insect. The fallen knight’s body was ruined, his once-handsome face a mask of charred flesh. A crowing laugh of triumph rang out, and the necromancer vanished behind a veil of mist. Consumed by a tidal wave of rage and frustration, Louen lashed out at the skeletal undead around him, each chattering skull sporting a dead man’s grin. His violent outburst bought him a moment’s reprieve, and he cast a last horrified look at the silvered corpse that was all that remained of his friend. A haggard face was reflected back at him, streaked with dirt and on the verge of panic as the dead closed in. Exhausted, Louen splashed into the mud at the lake’s edge, forced back by a press of dead flesh. Dozens of grasping corpses snatched at his vambraces and breastplate, ripping away pieces of armour and scraps of sun-bleached cloth. They clawed at his sword, his gauntlets, his shield. One of the creatures yanked at his helmet, pulling it violently to one side. Louen was forced to twist his head free and abandon it entirely, snarling in disgust as the creature broke its teeth on his heraldic crest. He cried out as steel-hard fingers dug deep into his tensed thigh. Rich red blood coursed over ragged yellow nails. Everywhere he looked, death masks moaned and drooled. A throng of the cursed things pushed forwards, falling over themselves in their eagerness to reach him. Every time one toppled into the muck, two more clambered over it, teeth chattering in their cannibalistic fever. Cold fingers quested for his mouth and his eye sockets, seeking purchase. ‘You rotting bastards!’ Louen shouted as he slashed and shoved. ‘By the Lady, get back into the mud!’ He hacked at those nearest him, fighting for the room to swing his blade and turning his head to draw a breath of clean air. His muscles burnt inside, pain flaring in every limb. Yet with each downward stroke another one of the creatures fell, for his ancestral blade was the finest Bretonnian steel and his foes’ flesh as soft as rot. The lake’s edge was strewn with hundreds of contorted corpses. Unclean fluids tainted its waters for a league in either direction. Some of the dead bodies were those of other Bretonnian knights, glints of silver and splashes of primary colour in a field of grey-brown limbs. Fear touched Louen’s heart. The chance of victory, so tangible earlier that day, was a fading memory. The dead were so many that this had become little more than a battle for survival. ‘No,’ he said, biting his lip hard in an effort to clear the despair from his thoughts, ‘not yet, not yet.’ He was a knight of Couronne and the royal blood of Bretonnia flowed in his veins. Myldeon could not be allowed to win. The necromancer’s mud-spattered puppets were a plague upon the land. Grinding his teeth, the lone knight squinted away the sweat in his eyes and swung once more, taking a corpse-thing’s jaw from its face and toppling another with the backswing. He spat in disgust as stale blood spattered his greying beard, the taste of it like vinegar on his lips. His next swing took another corpse in the chest, and as his sword caught in its ribs he kicked the creature from the blade. The effort of yanking his injured leg from the mud sent a sick wave of pain and tiredness through him. His knee gave way, and for horrible second he though he would pitch over, joining the corpses in the green-grey water. Only the grasping fingers of a dead man, caught in the wool of his tunic, kept Louen upright. Exhaustion was his real enemy; a black shroud lurking on the edge of his vision that threatened to swallow him whole. ‘Escape,’ Louen muttered through his teeth. Escape was the only option left, he thought. To where, though? All that lay ahead was a field of living corpses, and all that lay behind was deepening water. There was no way out but to fight. Once, twice, Louen stabbed his sword into a pair of the dead things that pressed up against his shield. He shoved their bodies away with a surge of effort, stumbling along the lake’s edge in the hope of finding a path to freedom. Brackish water splashed his face as he churned through the thick black mud, clearing his thoughts a little. He caught a brief glimpse of the battle around him, or rather its aftermath. The necromancer’s undead host stretched away in both directions along the perimeter of the lake. A thousand dead eyes were staring straight at him. Letting out a roar of anger and hopelessness, Louen hacked at the corpses lurching through the water towards him. Limbs fell away in sprays of stale blood, heads were severed from necks with each sword stroke. Yet still the haunted things came on, splashing and stumbling through the shallows. They cared not for their losses; they had been dead a long time before the necromancer Myldeon had torn them out of their graves. A wall of clammy flesh pushed up against his shield arm as the horde surged forwards once more, and a mocking laugh echoed through the evening mist behind them. Louen caught a glimpse of a white-robed figure standing tall on a gnarled stump, a fallen comrade’s crested helmet raised above his head with the decapitated head still inside. Blood spattered his pallid face, an unholy sacrament the knight was powerless to stop. The tide of the dead came on, pressing, surging. Another step back, then another. Mud sucked at Louen’s armoured feet. Water lapped the backs of his thighs. He felt a sharp stab of pain as rotten teeth sank into his cheek. With a cry, the knight pitched backwards into the lake. Ice-cold water pushed frozen fingers through Louen’s matted hair and closed over his face. A corpse fell on top of him, its toothless mouth working frantically. He scrabbled backwards, elbowing the creature from him, kicking the grasping fingers closing around his legs away. The twilight sky above dimmed as his body was pulled down by the weight of his armour. Bubbles streamed from his mouth and nose. Desperate, he expended precious breath to fight free from the arms that thrashed and dangled from the surface of the water. Down and down he sank, farther and farther into the cold and the dark. Streamers of dank weed brushed against his face. This armour, he thought; the very same armour that has saved my life from daemons and dragons alike is now to prove the death of me. What a useless way to die. Too tired to get it off. Too tired to do anything but drown. A few rays of evening sunlight penetrated the mosaic of corpses above him. Just as his lungs burned their last and his mouth filled with foul-tasting fluid, Louen caught a glimpse of his reflection in the blade of his sword. Shafts of twilight flashed across Louen’s blade as ice-cold water rushed into his lungs with painful force. He flailed and thrashed, his injured leg leaking clouds of blood, but it was no use. The weight of his armour was drawing him down into the depths, the light of the world above dwindling to darkness. Louen could feel his veins burning, every one alight. The pain was so total that inside it there was a strange kind of peace. Lungs full, he had no option but to consume the essence of the lake, taking it into himself, becoming one with it, filling his chest with it. A minute passed, then another. Still he sank. Still he lived. What wonder was this? The murk was becoming lighter. A vague shimmering, at first, then a lambent, omnipresent glow that illuminated waving fronds and strange, horned fish. An unbearable pressure built inside his head as he sank, only to vanish with a dull pop. The water tasted like… it tasted like thick air, nothing more. Breathable. Reassuring, even. Yet there is still no bottom, thought Louen as he sank further into the darkness. A strange notion entered his head, his suspicions coalescing around it like a pearl around a speck of grit. The knight kicked out, scissoring his legs, surprised at the ease of movement. He was no longer slow and cumbersome, either, but able to move quite naturally despite his armour. This must be the afterlife, he thought; if so, Lady alone knows why my leg still stings so damn much. Something lithe and silver flashed in the emerald depths, little more than a serpentine line in the distance. Sensing danger, Louen tightened his shield-straps with his teeth and raised his sword, thankful of the wrist-chain that had kept his blade to hand even whilst upon the threshold of death. The line in the distance became a dot, then a blurred disc, then a monstrous, armoured mouth yawning wide enough to swallow a horse. Louen jerked away at the last moment, eyes wide, but could not clear its path entirely. The thing’s plated head smashed into him with battering-ram force, violently knocking him aside. Lights burst in his head, fading to a dull confusion. That impact was the clash of steel on steel, he thought. I’d know it anywhere; even underwater. As he flailed to regain control he glimpsed a tapered mass of silvered muscle streaming past in a storm of blood-coloured bubbles. Pulling himself upright with a scooping motion of his shield, Louen whipped his head left and right, desperately scanning for the water-beast that was intent upon devouring him. All he could see was soft, green water and dappled shadow. Some nameless instinct made Louen look down. A giant fanged maw was rushing up towards him. Louen burbled an involuntary cry as he twisted his body, pulling his shield close in defence. The creature’s steel-plated teeth crashed into it with terrific force. Louen felt ribs splinter in his chest. He caught a glimpse of a giant black eye rushing past, malevolent and cold. Almost without thinking he stabbed hard at the creature’s muscled flank. His blade stuck fast. Louen’s sword arm was all but ripped from its socket as he was pulled through the water at breathtaking speed. Columns of bubbles blasted past him. The aquatic horror raged further into the depths, thrashing left and right in an attempt to dislodge the troublesome barb in its flank. Louen ground his teeth with the sheer effort of staying conscious as his body was battered and bruised against the beast’s massive frame. ‘Lady!’ he shouted, his words badly distorted by the water. ‘Give me strength, I beg you!’ Slowly, painfully, he forced his good leg upwards onto the blade stuck in the beast’s flank, using his ancestral sword as a man uses a branch to climb a tree. Held fast by his wrist-chain, he looped his injured leg around the sword, trying to lever it free. Nothing, not even an inch. It was stuck fast in the beast’s steel-plated flank. Louen cast around desperately, water rushing into his eyes, his mouth, his ears. Looping the wrist-chain under the hilt and over the blade, he pushed his armoured forearm against the section at his wrist, leaning all his weight into it. The protesting chain finally gave with a dull snap, its sudden release nearly carrying Louen into the trackless depths. Mustering his strength, Louen hooked his foot around the lost blade’s guard and scrabbled up closer to the creature’s armoured spine, water pounding him relentlessly. Down it went, frantic to reach some nameless destination. A terrible, final cold threatened to consume Louen, seeping into his bones like the chill of the grave. With a bubbling shout of anger, Louen raised his shield above his head, gripping the edge with his empty sword hand before bringing it down hard. His aim was true. He jammed the point of the shield a full metre under the monstrosity’s topmost spinal plate, feeling a grim satisfaction as the thing shuddered in response. Louen fought the rush of water with his whole body, drawing his longknife and gripping it in his teeth. Taking the shield’s upper edge in both hands, he yanked backwards with all his muscled weight, letting the thunderous rush of water add to his efforts. A moment’s resistance and the creature’s dorsal plate tore free. For a heartbeat Louen was torn away with it, but his reactions were fast enough for him to grab the edge of the gap in the creature’s dorsal plates. Fighting hard, he dragged himself up to the beast’s spinal ridge once more. The creature bucked and rolled like a wild destrier, but Louen clung on. With a great overarm swing he stabbed his longknife deep into the creature’s ridged spine, burying it right up to its gilded hilt. The beast’s wild thrashing turned into convulsions, then spasmodic shudders, then a slow, drifting stillness. Blossoms of dark ichor mingled with Louen’s own lifeblood in a foul-tasting cloud. Thick ribbons of black blood stretched away from Louen’s limbs. As he drifted downwards his eyes blinked, drooped, and then closed altogether. His broken body fell away into the darkness, abandoned to the icy waters of his last sleep. ‘Awake, sir knight. The feast awaits.’ Louen cautiously opened one eye. He was alive, but his head was pounding like a troubadour’s drum and his ribs throbbed where they had been broken. He had awoken from his strange fever-dream to find himself in a forest of some kind; that was plain enough. Shafts of hazy cyan light dappled through the canopy towards him. Up above, the slender trees of the forest swung gently back and forth, their leaves like translucent fingers. Schools of dainty silver birds soared from one slender trunk to another. A diamond-skinned trout undulated past, its scales iridescent in the hazy light. Not birds. Fish. Louen sat up violently, drawing in a massive lungful of water and coughing hard. It took a moment before he realised he could breathe as easily as ever. There was a pale-skinned woman crouching an arm’s length in front of him, her smirk half-hidden as she put her hand to her mouth in mock concern. Shimmering auburn hair fanned out around her head, and a thin blue-green dress clung to every curve of her body. Louen recovered his wits, quickly looking down out of respect. He half expected to glimpse a fish tail below her waist, but instead saw only a pair of dainty feet, one covering the other. Neither touched the sand underneath. ‘Sir Knight, you are safe here,’ she said, raising his chin with the back of her hand. ‘It is safe to look, to touch, to eat...’ ‘I… ah, yes. One moment, my lady,’ said Louen, struggling to stand on the shifting shale that passed for the ground underfoot. ‘I nearly got eaten myself, truth be told, just a moment ago. My name is simply Louen – at your service.’ He bowed low, slowly toppling to the left before righting himself with a frown. The water-damsel giggled and touched her lips. ‘I saw you kill the lake-lion,’ she whispered, eyes wide. ‘My queen will be impressed.’ ‘A lion?’ said Louen, shaking his head. ‘I… I’m not sure I’m in the right place, I should be–’ ‘Shh,’ interrupted the girl, a slender finger silencing him. Tilting her head to one side, she gently traced the outline of Louen’s mouth, rather too slowly for his liking. Yet there were worse fates to be borne. ‘Come, Louen of the Land,’ she said, ‘the court awaits you.’ She whirled around in the water, hair spiralling behind, and scissored away in a flash of bare white legs. She looked back over her shoulder for a moment, playfulness glinting in her eyes. ‘All will become clear soon enough, brave knight,’ she said. ‘Do not fear.’ Eyebrows raised, Louen shook his head slowly and trudged across the sandy bottom of the lake after her. The girl led him through the water into a madman’s dream. A great knurled mass of volcanic rock stretched into the distance, each skull-like bubble and lump crested with a silver platter bearing an artfully arranged display of waterfruit. Orb-like glowfish drifted a few metres above, as stately and pompous as kings at their own coronations. Eels as thick as Louen’s thigh poked needle-tooth heads from hiding-nests that very much reminded him of eye sockets, pinching platters of colourful food in their sharp teeth and moving them from one rocky protrusion to another in a slow interlocking dance. For all the strangeness of the scene, it was the diners at the feast that made Louen’s hand stray close to his longknife. To his left, a dapper lord with a web-crested horsehead glared imperiously at him, while to the right a pair of tall females with the elongated anatomies of pipefish batted long eyelashes. A man-sized water spider ignored him as it eagerly conveyed the contents of a half-dozen dishes into its clacking maw, the dragonfly nymph sitting opposite tutting its mandibles in prim disapproval. Each of the surreal courtiers was armoured head to toe in sculpted and engraved steel that fitted their bizarre anatomies to the inch. A respectful distance behind the courtiers stood pale-skinned young men, armoured in scalloped plate and holding dishes brimming with exotic foods. Presiding over the banquet was a stunning female figure, the water around her glowing like liquid gold. She wore a plated corset of mother-of-pearl, and her immaculate features were haloed in a crown of luscious silver locks that curled and twirled against each other like courting snakes. Can it really be her? Louen knelt on the sands, his eyes cast down respectfully. He felt a great warmth in his soul that transcended his mortal senses. It is her, he concluded. The Lady of the Lake. I kneel before the goddess I have worshipped since I was a child. Louen’s heart was a balled fist in his chest, his breath so short he thought he might drown after all. Even seated she was statuesque; standing, she would have been taller even than Brocard. As he thought of his friend, Louen felt a stab of pain that had nothing to do with his broken ribs. He chanced a look at the sands nearby. Kneeling before the Lady was the water-damsel that had led Louen to the feast. For all her youthful beauty she was a drab serf in comparison to her mistress. The nymph took the goddess’s proffered hand and kissed it before whispering something Louen could not hear and flowing away into the background, joining a clique of similarly attired beauties. They began to sing softly, a fluid melody that wound through the water like a living thing. The numinous woman looked down at Louen with piercing intensity. Distracted by the strange song of the nymphs, he had subconsciously raised his gaze to look upon her, and she met his eyes with an imperious expression. Suddenly, he felt all his warm and golden feelings turn to sludge. The diners around the goddess stilled and put down their silverware. Every eye stared at the knight in their midst. Louen was reminded of a similar experience in the battle on the shores above. He was not entirely sure which of the two he liked least. ‘Louen of the Land,’ the queen said, her silk-and-honey tones resonating inside Louen’s head. ‘I bid you welcome to my court.’ Louen bowed even further, his head dipped almost to the sand. ‘I give you my thanks, fairest Lady and Goddess of All.’ ‘You know me, then, lord-of-the-mud?’ ‘I believe so, yes. I stand before no less than the true queen of Bretonnia, the Lady of the Lake.’ She said nothing for a moment, her lambent eyes examining every inch of the tattered knight in front of her. The eerie harmonies of her handmaidens ebbed and flowed behind her like the lapping of water on the lake’s edge. ‘That is… one of my names. And you, by your shield, are a royal son of the realm mortals call Couronne.’ ‘I am, my Lady,’ he said, fighting to keep his voice from shaking. ‘I am at your service, as I have been since I could wield a sword.’ ‘You slew a lake-lion, human,’ she said, her beautiful eyes narrowed. ‘No small feat of arms. Perhaps you are too interesting to be sliced open, gutted and served to my friends as I had originally intended.’ Louen remained on his knees, eyes downcast, as he ventured a reply. ‘If you refer to the dread beast that attacked me, then I can only apologise, my Lady,’ said Louen. ‘I acted in self-defence alone. Had I known it was your personal guardian, I would have swum into its gullet with a smile.’ The Lady’s expression did not change, though her eyes flickered with amusement for a second. Halfway down the table the handmaiden who had led Louen to the table giggled nervously. ‘Perhaps I should take you as a guardian in its place,’ she replied. Her armoured courtiers clacked and bubbled in what Louen took as an approximation of sycophantic laughter. ‘Though I have many others, each formidable in their own ways.’ ‘I pray I never cross them, my Lady.’ ‘As well you might. And you slew the beast with this alone?’ she asked, pointing at the longknife hanging by Louen’s groin. Louen looked down, abashed. ‘I lost my bondsword in the battle, a priceless heirloom of Couronne.’ ‘Perhaps it was a shackle to a former life. A chain that needed to be broken.’ Louen’s brow furrowed. ‘As you say, my Lady.’ ‘A knight without a sword is a sorry creature,’ she said with a half-smile. ‘And one with the courage to use it for the good of all should not go without.’ As she spoke, her hair pulled itself back from around her head, furling into a complex web of plaits as the many-legged dishes near her seat scuttled to one side to make room. Planting her hands on the banquet table, the Lady took a long, deep breath before exhaling a long stream of silver bubbles into the water from her pursed lips, moving her head slowly from left to right as she did so. The bubbles coalesced horizontally in the shape of a sword, shimmering and jostling in the glowing light of their creator. The Lady raised a delicate hand and ran it along the apparition. As her palm passed across the blade it solidified into shining silverine. Brightly coloured bubbles turned into gems upon its hilt. It was the Sword of Couronne, unmistakably, only somehow more so – a sword of spirit as much as of physical substance. The goddess took it by the hilt and gently touched its blade to each of Louen’s shoulders in turn. ‘Rise, Sir Louen, land-knight, slayer of monsters and bane of the dead. You have spirit I thought long lost to this land. I dub thee Louen Leoncoeur; Heart of the Lion.’ ‘I… I thank you, my Lady,’ he stammered as he met her gaze. ‘It is an honour beyond measure to be named by a divine being more beautiful than the sun.’ ‘Enough of such fine words,’ she said, handing him the sword hilt-first. He bowed deeply once more and sheathed it in the scabbard across his back. ‘Be seated, Sir Knight,’ she continued. ‘We have much to discuss about the lands above.’ ‘Just so, my queen. I believe that Couronne is in great danger,’ said Louen, sombrely. ‘The whole of Bretonnia is beset. The flower of chivalry is withering on the vine. They need a strong leader, Louen Leoncoeur. Even now dark souls plague my lands with those who belong dead.’ She beckoned to one of the servants standing to attention in the murk. He came forwards, a pale-skinned and serious youth with the muscular build of a swimmer. His scalloped armour depicted a stylised legion of warriors riding fantastic underwater beasts. ‘Serve our guest, please, Landuin. He will need his strength.’ Silently, the youth carefully placed a wriggling morsel onto Louen’s plate. One of his eyes was green, the other blue. Louen studied the boy as he attempted to dissect the many-legged thing curling on his plate and fork it into his mouth. It was strangely nourishing, but the riot of feelings surging within him meant he tasted it not at all. ‘I used to know a young man named Landuin, long ago,’ said Louen, carefully. ‘He had the most remarkable eyes, eyes that hinted at hidden depths.’ The Lady turned her head, her gaze spearing him like a lance. ‘The gifted ones I take, as is my due. It has ever been this way. Power unharnessed cannot be allowed to turn sour.’ ‘True,’ said Louen. An awkward moment passed. ‘But…’ ‘Continue,’ she sighed. ‘With the greatest respect, my Lady… perhaps a gifted child’s parents might prove equal to the task, given the chance?’ ‘Watch your tongue, Sir Knight, I may have need of it,’ she said, her expression cold. ‘Your kind bleed the land white to serve your own selfish ends. I take my own tithe for the good of all. It can be no other way.’ ‘Is that because these… gifted ones can turn to dark paths, as it is whispered of the Empire?’ ‘Left to mortal paths, those with the Gift can soon become prey for powers far more terrible than myself. Be thankful I return the females to guide you in your wars.’ ‘Wars I have fought in your name for longer than I care to remember.’ ‘Your devotion has not gone unnoticed,’ she replied, delicately dissecting a many-legged creature that belonged under a stone. ‘Hence your current status as a charmingly naive courtier instead of a thoroughly drowned corpse.’ ‘I would gladly give my life to defend Bretonnia a hundred times over, as would my kin.’ ‘Yet you lost them all in a charge that had no hope of victory. How many of Couronne’s finest rode with you?’ she asked. Louen reddened, his cheeks burning even in the cool of the water. ‘Sixteen, in truth.’ ‘Sixteen,’ she said, flatly. ‘It… It proved insufficient.’ ‘I would imagine so. The Grail Companions made do with less, but Gilles the Uniter you are not – not yet at least. For the land to thrive, there must be hope.’ ‘I have always believed so, my Lady. Perhaps if…’ ‘Perhaps if you were to drink from the Grail, you would have the power to unite Bretonnia?’ Louen looked down, abashed that his thoughts were so transparent. ‘You have thought of little else these past five years, Louen,’ she laughed. ‘Sir knight, you have already drunk of that chalice.’ ‘My Lady?’ ‘You have. Listen well, oh brave and charming fool. I am the land, and the land is me; we are one. When the land sickens, my powers fade; when it thrives, I am whole. The waters of Bretonnia are my blood; they flow in my veins just as I flow in their valleys. The lake is the Grail, just as the sacred spring or the trickling brook is the Grail. What you truly seek is not a physical thing at all, but my blessing and my gift.’ Louen was too stunned to reply. Understanding rose within him like the dawn, and he met the Lady’s gaze with newfound awe. ‘But I am not worthy of it,’ he said, his eyes wide. The Lady smiled kindly. ‘Few are,’ she said, ‘but you have a strong heart, a quick mind, and a humility that serves you better than any shield. It will suffice, Louen. It will have to.’ She rose to her full height, the intertwining songs of her nymph handmaidens rising with her. Louen was lost in awe at the sheer majesty of the sight. Bringing her arms together, she cupped her hands, holding them out to Louen’s mouth. The water within them glowed gold, illuminated from within. Hesitantly, he took them in his own; two calloused gloves of scarred skin against her slender white fingers. Dipping his head, the knight drank deep. Radiance poured into him like liquid sunlight. Burning heat flowed through his veins as his body was renewed and strengthened by the glory of his goddess. His heart thundered as strong as a bull’s, his muscles became hard as oak, and the years fell away from him like snow melting in the spring sun. He felt like roaring, laughing, running, bursting apart into a being of pure light. The Lady of the Lake glowed with pleasure as Louen rose reborn from the sands. On a sudden impulse she took his face in her hands and kissed him. Her lips were surprisingly warm. A summer in paradise passed before she broke away. ‘I like you, you old lion,’ she said, tilting her head to one side. ‘I sense true greatness in you.’ Still stunned from the kiss, it was all Louen could do to draw his newly-fashioned blade and present it to her. ‘My sword and my soul are yours to command, my Lady.’ ‘You and I have much work to do, I feel,’ said the goddess. ‘I am but one man, my queen,’ Louen whispered, his expression troubled. ‘You speak the truth; even with my blessing, victory is a distant hope. Yet all is not lost. Bretonnia’s long-mourned sons will ride with you, for a while. It is time they made their presence felt.’ The armoured youths around the banqueting table came forwards, their servant’s finery replaced by full battle dress. As one they drew the longswords at their hips, kneeling before Louen as knights kneel before a king. Landuin was at their head, his mismatched eyes glittering with the reflected glory of the goddess. ‘I cannot offer you enough thanks, my Lady,’ said Louen, his voice hoarse with emotion. ‘You have given gifts beyond measure.’ ‘Louen Leoncoeur of Bretonnia,’ she said. ‘Reclaim the lands in my name, and this will be just the beginning.’ The water-beast undulated through the depths like a horse in full charge, its powerful and fin-ridged legs driving it ever upwards through the lake. Its rippling hide shimmered like chainmail, and a long and viciously toothed head topped a crested neck, reminding Louen of a hunter-fish more than a warhorse. Its fluid gait spoke of a very different musculature, yet the power in its frame was undeniable, and it obeyed Louen’s thoughts before he had even given them voice. Behind Louen came a host of proud young knights, each one a stolen son of Bretonnia grown to powerful maturity. Pale of skin and regal in stature, they wielded a variety of strange weapons, from longspears to tridents to flails that ended in silvered hooks. Light glimmered from their skin, as it did from their steeds. At Louen’s side rode Landuin, Brocard’s son and the unofficial champion of the host churning through the water to the land above. Landuin met Louen’s gaze as fingers of sunlight began to dapple the water overhead, nodding solemnly with approval. Louen felt a fierce pride blossom in his heart. He hadn’t felt this good, this pure, in years; decades, if he was to be honest with himself. Louen and Landuin burst out of the lake like hunting sharks breaching for prey. A great spray of droplets sent prisms of colour through the evening air. Thundering onto the lake’s shore, they rode pell-mell for the host of grey-brown bodies shambling in the distance, their warbeasts’ splayed hooves thudding through the mud. Close behind them, rank upon rank of Bretonnia’s lost sons breached the surface of the lake and galloped across the waters to the shore, steeds snorting and hissing through their dagger-like teeth. Flaxen hair and scalloped pennants rippled, swirling in the air as if they were still underwater. Looking back, Louen’s head swam with the magnitude of what had happened since his baptism in the lake. Despite the feeling that days had passed, the undead horde had barely moved a mile from the lake’s shore. The same sun that had set on Brocard, Rebelond and the rest glimmered on the horizon as if reluctant to admit defeat. The water-horsemen formed up into a series of wedges behind Louen as his beast hammered across the fields towards the graveyard host. Somehow he could feel the beast relishing the solidity of the ground underfoot just as a hound relishes the feel of cool water upon its skin. Elation sang in his veins, a feeling of power that made him giddy. He would never be tired again, he could feel it. Sleep was now the concern of lesser men. Louen had too much fighting to do for such indulgences. ‘Sons of Bretonnia!’ he shouted as the host bore down on Myldeon’s legions. ‘We ride for unity!’ A fierce shout echoed from behind him. Some of the corpse-things ahead began to turn around. ‘We ride for the living!’ Louen shouted, his teeth bared in a snarl. More of the undead host turned at the thunder of the oncoming cavalry. Slowly, clumsily, they began to form up into ranks, turning to face the Bretonnian charge. At the horde’s heart was a white-robed figure, his escort bolstered by the brightly attired corpses of those that Louen had once counted his friends. ‘We ride for vengeance!’ screamed Louen. A host of young voices roared in unison behind him, untold years of rage waiting to be unleashed. ‘We ride for the Lady!’ The charge hit home with the force of a tidal wave. The unliving puppets that Myldeon had bound to his will were smashed into the mud with the force of the impact, decaying bodies practically splashing apart as the silver host thundered home. Scaled warbeasts snapped and kicked and thrashed, hooked flails tore limbs from joints, tridents and longspears sent bodies flying through the air. The host ground mercilessly through phalanx after phalanx of corpse-things with not a single loss. Louen was a bolt of silvered lightning at the heart of the storm. Even to be near one so blessed was deadly to the foul half-things ranged against him. Skin sloughed from flesh and flesh fell from bone as the magic holding the rotten creatures together began to unravel in his wake. Unstoppable, Louen struck left and right with the Sword of Couronne, each decapitating blow leaving a slowly fading curve of silver light hanging in the air. A succession of glittering arcs stretched across the corpse-field like the magical script of some ancient race. Blood pounding in his ears, Louen guided his beast towards the necromancer at the heart of the horde. ‘With me!’ he shouted, his warbeast trampling the soft limbs of the undead as it pounded towards their prey. Landuin and three-dozen knights rode down the morass of dead flesh in front of them, cutting into their commander’s wake with the ease of a chariot scything through a field of wheatsheafs. Louen’s heart leapt in his chest; less than a hundred metres separated him from the fiend Myldeon and his skeletal bodyguard. A curse flew from the necromancer’s lips, spat in a puff of blood. To Louen’s right, three of the silvered host blackened and twisted before exploding in a cloud of gore. The remainder rode on, stamping and crunching their way through the dread bodyguard that sought to protect their master. An armoured figure suddenly reared up from amongst the ranks, his yellow and black heraldry obscured by mud and dried blood. Guido the Gut, unmistakably – that famous belly hung out from a rent in his armour in dangling loops of intestines. What remained of his once-prized lance was braced against his foot, broken during his last charge and imperfectly set. Yet it was still an eight-foot shaft of Bretonnian oak. It took Louen’s charging warbeast in the base of the throat, spitting it through. Louen was thrown into a crowd of skeletons, slamming bodily into them in an explosion of bone and rust. Snarling, he pushed himself from the mass of bleached bones and dented armour. A rusted blade was stuck through his sword arm at a sickening angle, piercing his elbow from one side to the other. It was not blood that flowed out from the wound, but golden, liquid light. Louen barely had time to think before what was left of Red Rebelond was upon him, twinned blades flashing. Worse still, the corpse of Sir Heverte was pushing out from the skeletal ranks to Louen’s flank, jaw hanging loose. His arm stuck through, Louen was hard pressed to stop the fury of the dual assault. The charred corpse of Brocard closed the triangle behind him, his great mace swinging like a pendulum to knock skeletons and knights alike into the mud. Ducking a clumsy thrust from Rebelond, Louen’s glowing blade took Sir Heverte in the neck. As the knight’s grimacing head tumbled to the ground, Louen’s lightning-fast backswing smashed Red Rebelond from his feet. Against all reason Heverte’s headless corpse came on, wrapping its cold limbs around Louen’s arms. Myldeon’s laughter rang in the air as Brocard loomed behind his former friend, mace raised. There was a flash as Landuin’s warbeast leapt in a great curve over the wall of bone formed by Myldeon’s skeletal bodyguard. Barbed spear lowered, the young knight’s strike took Brocard in the chest. A single well-placed thrust broke the necromancer’s spell over the dead knight; the armoured corpse came apart instantly, its ashes scattered to the four winds in the wake of Landuin’s charge. Behind the young knight came a tight wedge of Bretonnia’s lost sons, smashing the bulk of Myldeon’s skeletal bodyguard into the mud and leaving the necromancer vulnerable. Vaulting from the back of his warbeast with a cry, Landuin brought his longsword swinging down towards Myldeon in a great killing arc. The witch-fiend rattled a twisted wand towards Landuin, his face a rictus of malice. The young knight suddenly found himself frozen in mid air, unable to move. A muttered phrase spilt from the necromancer’s lips. Suddenly the fallen wights that Landuin’s brethren had smashed into the mud stumbled upright once more. Like marionettes jerked into life, they formed a wall of bone and bat-winged armour to block Louen’s path. Behind them Myldeon grinned, sharpened teeth slicked with blood as he drew a long sacrificial knife. Inspiration flashed bright in Louen’s mind. Slashing open his shield-straps with his glowing blade, he brought the steel symbol of Couronne carving round in a great arc, putting all his newfound strength behind it in one great throw. The pointed end of the shield smashed through ribcage and armour alike in a spray of bone and rust, neither spine nor skull slowing its passage. Louen’s aim was true. The shield slammed into Myldeon’s scrawny neck, neatly decapitating him in a spray of gore before clattering to the ground. Blood hissed upon the rampant lion of the shield’s heraldry like rain on a hot plate. As the headless body of their master tumbled to the ground, the skeletal men-at-arms and lurching zombies bearing down upon Louen collapsed. An invisible wave of release passed out from the dead necromancer’s body and across the muddy fields. Undead toppled by the dozen, then by the hundred, until nothing was left but a miles-wide charnel pit. Louen looked down at the twice-dead knights around him as the lost sons of Bretonnia tended their own wounded amidst the corpses. The fury of battle was ebbing away, replaced by a great sadness. Face grim, Louen took stock of how many good men had been lost, closing their eyes one after another and saying a quick prayer to the Lady for their souls to be reclaimed by the land. Never again, he swore to himself. Bretonnia will be reborn healthy and strong, if it takes one year or a hundred. As Louen gathered a token from each of his lost knights to return to their loved ones, liquid light drizzled from the wound at his elbow, spattering his surcoat with bright spots of gold and forming small puddles in the mud by his feet. His arm hardly hurt at all, even when he pulled out the rusted sword, and as soon as the blade was gone the wound visibly began to heal. Shaking his head in disbelief, Louen stood over the largest puddle of the strange substance that flowed in his veins. Movement caught his eye on the ground at his feet, and he looked down in puzzlement at his reflection. The Lady of the Lake looked up at him from the pool of lifeblood and smiled.