The dirt track pulled narrow through the overgrown oak thickets, churned into deep, waterlogged ruts by trade wagons long gone.
Mordred shifted her balance in the leather saddle, her heavy coat creaking against the iron plates strapped across her shoulders.
The horse beneath her—the dull gray gelding she’d swiped right out from under the stablemaster’s nose—snorted, its hooves squelching heavily in the mud.
She reached up with a gauntleted hand, tapping the cold, curved steel of the horned helmet enclosing her head.
The fit was absurdly tight around her jaw, flattening her ears and turning her breath into hot, damp gasps that fogged the metal visor.
‘Morgan really had to pick the most unhinged design imaginable,’ Mordred thought, rolling her neck until the neck-guard clanked loudly against her collarbone.
‘How am I supposed to eat soup in this thing?
Sleep with a giant pair of iron horns jamming into my shoulder blades?
If I rock up to Arthur’s court looking like a wandering minotaur, someone’s going to fire a crossbow into my throat before I even introduce myself.’
She spat a stray tuft of helmet lining out of her mouth, adjusting her leather reins as the gelding picked its way past a rotting fallen trunk.
A sharp twig snapped in the high brush bordering the left side of the trail.
The gelding’s ears flicked back.
Mordred kept her hands loose on the reins, letting the horse slow to a plodding walk while she tilted her iron mask toward the dense fern thicket with an open, inquiring posture.
Four men stepped out onto the mud track, blocking the narrow bend ahead.
Their clothes were filthy, stained with old grease and dried road soot, their faces wrapped in torn black rags.
The front man—taller than the rest, with a dull, notched cleaver resting on his shoulder—stepped forward and held up a grime-streaked palm.
“Wayfarer,” the leader said, his voice coarse from cheap gin and woodsmoke.
“Hand over the coin pouch, the horse, and whatever iron you’ve got strapped to your saddle.
Do that, and you keep breathing.”
Mordred leaned forward, resting both forearms comfortably over the leather saddle horn.
“I’d love to help you out, honestly,” she called through the narrow visor slits, her voice bouncing inside the iron dome with a metallic, hollow twang.
“Problem is, my horse is stubborn, my boots are full of mud, and I spent my last copper three miles back.
What if I just give you a polite wave instead?”
The leader’s eyes narrowed above his black face wrap.
He lowered the heavy cleaver, his knuckles turning pale against the ash handle.
“I’m not here for a speech, knight.
Leave the gear, or we cut it off your corpse.”
The three men behind him spread out into the knee-high ferns, their boots splashing through the ditch to flank the trail.
‘Right.
Negotiating time is over.’
Mordred slipped her boots clear of the stirrups and launched herself off the gelding’s side, hitting the mud on her feet with a heavy, sliding thud.
She pulled the short iron sword from her belt, dropped her shoulder, and charged straight into the nearest flanker before his boots could settle in the ditch.
CRACK!
The heavy iron dome of her horned helmet slammed directly into the bandit’s face wrap.
Bones crunched under the impact.
The man hit the wet grass backward, his legs tangling in the brush as Mordred drove the flat of her iron blade downward into his sternum with a dull, heavy thud.
“Get off him!” the leader roared, lunging forward with his cleaver raised high.
Mordred spun on her heel, her heavy iron-soled boots digging deep into the muck.
She leaned inside his swing, letting the notched cleaver scrape harmlessly off her shoulder plate with a loud SCREECH of grinding metal.
Before he could reset his footing, Mordred drove her left gauntlet sideways, catching him squarely on the point of the jaw.
THUD!
The leader stumbled, his eyes rolling back as his head snapped sideways.
Mordred brought her sword around in a low arc, driving the point through his heavy tunic.
He collapsed into the mud, his cleaver slipping from his limp fingers.
The remaining two bandits froze in the tall ferns, their crude spears trembling.
They looked at their leader motionless in the ditch, then up at the horned iron figure standing over him, mud and water dripping from her blade.
“He’s…
he’s a demon!” one of them shrieked, dropping his spear into the wet leaves.
They scrambled backward into the thicket, their frantic footsteps crashing through the underbrush until the sound faded down the ravine.
Mordred stood in the middle of the trail, her chest heaving as her breath fogged the visor.
She rolled her left wrist to loosen the gauntlet strap, then wiped her blade against her thigh.
‘I didn’t panic,’ she realized, looking down at her mud-splattered gloves.
‘Five years of scrapping in the dirt, and human steel feels almost slow.’
She crouched over the leader, unhooked a grease-stained leather purse from his belt, and tossed it into the air.
The heavy clink of copper and silver coins echoed inside her helmet.
“Rule number one of highway robbery,” she muttered, tossing the pouch into her saddlebag as she gathered her horse’s reins.
“If you try to take someone’s supper, you better make sure you can chew what you bite off.”
She swung her leg back over the saddle, patted the gelding’s damp neck, and nudged him into a trot.
By the time the trail flattened out, the sun had dipped below the horizon, burying the forest in a thick violet dusk.
The vibrant green canopy gave way to twisted, leaf-stripped trees that clawed toward the gray sky like jagged fingers.
The gray gelding slowed its pace, its nostrils flaring as it tossed its head against the bridle.
‘The Cursed Woods,’ Mordred thought, narrowing her eyes through her helmet slits as a cold, foul mist rolled across the forest floor.
‘Cross this belt, clear the Salisbury plains, and the King’s stronghold is right there.
No time to make camp.’
She dug her heels into the horse’s flanks, pushing the animal into a forced canter through the dead trunks.
A sound rose above the horse’s rhythmic hooves—a dry, clicking rattle, like hundreds of hollow wooden beads rubbing together in a wicker basket.
The mist ahead parted.
White, desiccated ribcages emerged from the shadows, their bony finger joints clicking against rusted iron broadswords.
Eight skeletons stepped into the trail, their empty eye sockets burning with faint, sickly green cinders.
“Hell,” Mordred grunted, yanking her iron sword clear.
Before she could turn the horse, a skeleton lunged from the high brush, driving a rusted spearhead deep into the gelding’s chest.
The horse shrieked, rearing back before collapsing sideways into the mud.
Mordred kicked her feet clear of the stirrups, rolling hard across the wet roots as the horse crashed down behind her.
Bony fingers instantly swarmed the thrashing animal, tearing hide and muscle to splinters.
“You bastards!” Mordred barked, scrambling to her feet.
“I just got that horse!”
She sprinted forward, bringing her sword down with both hands.
The heavy iron blade crushed the lead skeleton’s skull into a shower of white powder, shattering its ribs into the dirt.
Without pausing, she spun, thrusting her blade through the spine of a second skeletal warrior.
The bones collapsed into a loose pile at her boots.
She turned to advance, but a faint clicking sound made her freeze.
Behind her, the shattered bones twitched in the mud.
Ribs dragged themselves across the wet leaves, snapping back into place around vertebrae as the cracked skulls reattached themselves with sickening CLINKS.
The skeletons stood right back up, raising their rusted weapons once more.
‘They don’t stay down?!’ Mordred backed up a step, her heel catching on a thick root.
‘That’s straight-up cheating!’
A rusted blade sliced across her forearm, cutting through her leather sleeve and leaving a bright red line across her skin.
Another spear tip grazed her side, biting into her flank.
She swung wildly, knocking back three ribcages at once, but more figures emerged from the fog, forming a tight, rattling circle around her.
Pain radiated through her side, her lungs burning as sweat soaked the padding inside her helmet.
Spotting a break in the trees where the dense forest gave way to open grass, she sprinted straight through the line of bones, shoving two skeletons aside with her shoulder plate.
She burst out of the tree line and onto the vast, flat expanse of the Salisbury plains.
The wind whipped across the high grass, cold and sharp.
Behind her, the skeletons poured out of the woods, their bony feet clicking rapidly against the hard soil.
‘I can’t outrun a dozen undead on foot,’ she thought, her breath coming in ragged, painful hitches as the slice on her side bled into her tunic.
‘I need ground.
I need cover.’
Ahead, standing silhouetted against the dark blue night sky, massive stone megaliths rose from the turf, arranged in a giant, ancient circle.
Stonehenge.
‘A stone ring,’ she thought, veering toward the massive upright slabs.
‘Narrow gaps.
I can force them into a choke point.’
She sprinted into the shadow of the giant stone trilithons, her heavy boots skittering across the smooth turf.
But as she ducked behind the first massive pillar, her heart sank.
The stone circle offered no rear escape—three more skeletons stepped out from behind the inner altar stone, while the horde from the woods flooded the outer ring, completely blocking every gap between the megaliths.
She was trapped in the center.
“Great,” Mordred wheezed, backing up until her shoulder plates pressed against the cold, rough face of a massive standing stone.
“A literal dead end.”
Her right arm trembled violently.
Her iron sword was snapped in half, the top eight inches buried somewhere back in the woods.
Her side throbbed with a dull, sickening heat, blood pooling inside her boot.
The skeletons closed in, their rusted blades raised in unison.
Suddenly, the cold wind whipping through the stone circle stopped dead.
A voice—resonant, deep, and impossibly clear—echoed directly inside Mordred’s mind.
It didn’t sound like Morgan’s unhinged whisper; it was ancient, heavy, and filled with a strange, solemn warmth.
Child…
what is it that you seek?
Mordred gritted her teeth, her vision swimming with red spots as she forced her fingers to tighten around the broken, useless hilt of her iron sword.
She thrust her chin up, glaring at the wall of approaching bones.
“I…” She spat a mouthful of copper-tasting spit onto the grass, her voice rasping inside her iron helmet.
“I want to shine!
I’m not dying in a hole for someone else’s war…
I’m taking the glory that belongs to me!”
Granted.
A blinding flash of crimson light exploded from the dirt right between her boots.
The air pressure inside the stone circle dropped instantly.
Mordred looked down.
Lying in the crushed grass was a massive two-handed sword.
Its hilt was wrapped in pristine white leather, its thick crossguard painted a striking red and silver, carved with ancient, intricate runes that pulsed with violent energy.
Deep, crimson lightning crackled along the flat of the silver blade, snapping through the air with loud THUN-DER cracks that lit up the ancient stones in blood-red light.
Mordred dropped her broken iron hilt.
She reached down with both hands, wrapping her gauntlets around the white leather grip.
The moment her fingers closed around the hilt, a massive surge of magic surged up her arms, flooding through her chest and cauterizing the bleeding tear in her side in an instant.
Red lightning burst outward from her body in an expanding ring, shattering the ground beneath her feet.
She raised the massive blade over her right shoulder, her eyes burning bright behind her helmet visor.
“ROAR, LEOCORNA!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
She slammed the crimson sword down into the turf.
A massive wave of jagged, red lightning surged across the grass like a tide of liquid fire.
The blinding arc swept through the stone circle, vaporizing the skeletons instantly.
The dark magic animating their bones was torn apart by the divine lightning, reducing their remains to fine, white ash before the echo of the thunder even faded from the plains.
The wind returned, blowing the smoke and ash out through the gaps in the giant stones.
Mordred stood alone in the center of the megaliths, resting the tip of the heavy red-and-white sword on the grass.
The crimson electricity flickered lazily along the edge before dimming into a quiet, warm hum.
She raised the blade, turning it over in her hands, admiring the perfect balance and the heavy, solid weight of the guard.
“Now this…” she murmured, a slow, confident grin spreading across her face beneath her horned visor.
“…this is a real sword.
Let me see King Arthur try to ignore me now.”