AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tuva, wings spread, let out one last hoot, then took to the skies.
Draven brushed past me, striding up to where the man kneeled, quivering. With a thrust of his dagger, the bandit was left lifeless in the dirt.
I turned to Guinevere. “Are you all right?”
But she was pointing at something behind me. “Morgan, look!”
I turned to see a bandit near our tethered horses. He was rooting around in the saddlebags. My saddlebags.
The man’s eyes lit up greedily as he snatched up an object and held it aloft in the moonlight.
The grail.
From the look in the bandit’s eyes, it was clear he saw more than a mere wooden chalice.
I ran towards him, ignoring Draven’s shouts from behind me.
The man was too focused on the grail to even notice as I charged. Reaching him, I knocked the grail from his hand. It clattered to the ground as the man looked up at me, enraged, and drew a needlelike dagger from his belt.
The man was quick. Quicker than the others had been.
The blade darted forward like a viper seeking vulnerable flesh.
I danced around his strikes, searching for an opening to thrust Excalibur forward. But the man blocked me each time, then moved back between our horses, shielding himself with their bodies. I clenched my jaw, limited by the necessity of not hurting a horse, and followed him in between the tethered mounts.
A sudden flash of pain cut through my hand as the man darted out from between two of the horses, his stiletto finding its mark as it carved a crimson tribute on my palm.
A look of triumph lit up his face. Then he crumpled like a marionette, falling to the ground as Draven’s longsword appeared through the center of his chest.
“You should have waited for me,” my mate said mildly, looking down at the man’s body as the horses whinnied nervously and sidestepped the pool of blood.
“I was fine. I had him.” I gestured to the sword. “You fetched your other blade I see.”
He shrugged. “I was tired of the daggers. You were holding your own.” He gestured to my hand.
“Just a scratch.”
I turned back to my horse, searching the ground for where the grail had fallen.
It was gone.
Panic welled in me.
Then I noticed Gawain standing a little distance away.
He had the grail in his hand and was raising it to the light, turning it this way then that, admiring it as the bandit had done.
“Gawain,” I called sharply. “Give it back.”
He looked towards me, a scowl disfiguring his normally pleasant face, and I blinked in surprise.
Then he tossed it. “Catch it then.”
The chalice flew through the air, spiraling over and over.
Without thinking, I reached upwards and caught the cup.
Instantly, a pain went through me. I dropped the chalice as if it were a hot coal and gasped.
