The Squire's Tale Read Online Free PDF

you really hit Sir Whoever with a stewpot?"
    Gawain laughed. "It was all I had at hand."
    Sir Kai chuckled. "I've suggested to Arthur that we should have a stewpot event at the next tournament. Better than bashing your friends off of horses with lances."
    "Ay, but it would look silly," Gawain said. "No knight can endure looking silly."
    "Oh, I wouldn't say that. Look at Griflet and Bagdemagus and that crew."
    "Tell me about this Griflet," Gawain said. "Did he really lose a fight with Sir Hautubris?"
    "Hautubris, was it? Never can remember these foreign names. Well, Griflet went out questing last month—"
    "Went out what?"
    "Questing. After the last wars, Arthur's knights got underfoot in the castle, so now he sends them out to look for adventures. He tells them to uphold the weak and so forth. Then, when they come back, they tell about their adventures. It gets them out of the king's hair for a space." Gawain grunted softly, and Kai added, "It's good for everyone. The knights like getting away now and again. I'd like it myself sometimes if I could."
    "Why can't you?"
    "I'm Arthur's seneschal. Someone has to see that everyone's fed and clothed."
    "I guessed, but it seems a shame. I'd say that you're a fighter."
    "I am," Sir Kai said agreeably. "Except for Arthur himself, I'm the best in Camelot. Or I was until you got here." Gawain said nothing, and Kai continued. "Anyway, Griflet came back from a quest last month with a story about a ferocious knight named—what was it? Hautubris—at a bridge, demanding to combat everyone who wanted to cross."
    "Rabbit-brained thing to do," Gawain observed.
    "Ay. Anyway, to hear Griflet tell it, they fought like men possessed for six hours until finally this Hautubris did something treacherous—I forget what—and villainously defeated him."
    "Anyone else see it?"
    "No."
    "Then I wonder why Griflet didn't say he'd won."
    Sir Kai laughed. "Hautubris took his horse and armor. Hard to explain that if he had won."
    "Tell me, Kai," Gawain said, "how did this Griflet ever get knighted?"
    "It wasn't Arthur's doing. When old Leodegrance gave Arthur the round table, it came with all of Leodegrance's knights. Some of them are proper chuckleheads, too. That was why Arthur started demanding some deed before he would knight anyone."
    Gawain nodded, and they rode in silence for a few minutes. Sir Kai squinted for a moment into the sun, lowering to their right. "Cursed sun," he muttered. He looked back at Gawain and said, "You've a handful of brothers, haven't you?"
    "Ay. There's Gaheris, Agrivain, and little Gareth. They plan to join me here someday."
    "Fighters?"
    "Not a bit of it. Gareth may be someday."
    Sir Kai grunted and spat. "If they can't fight, they can stay where they are. Camelot's already crawling with tournament knights. If we win this war, it'll be because of Arthur and his peasant soldiers."
    Terence eased himself in his saddle and wished for a drink and a rest. He checked the sun to see how long until sunset, and a flash of light in the distant woods caught his eye. He looked again, but there was nothing.
    A rapid drumming of hooves came from behind. Tor, three or four places back in the column, had ridden up and joined Gawain and Sir Kai. Sir Kai looked at him sharply. "Who told you to break ranks, boy?"
    "I'm sorry, Sir Kai, but I thought I should report," he said.
    "Report what?" Sir Kai said, frowning.
    "Signals, sir." He pointed at the hills to the right. "Someone up there."
    "A flash of light?" Sir Kai asked. "I saw it. One flash of light doesn't make a signal."
    "No, sir. There was a flash in reply—back there." Tor pointed directly behind them at the plain that they had just crossed.
    Sir Kai squinted at the hills for a moment, then said, "It still could be nothing."
    "Yes, sir," Tor replied.
    "But you did right," Sir Kai muttered absently. "They couldn't be this close, already."
    Gawain cleared his throat. "If you were going to attack this column, Kai, which direction would