"By my halidom," cried Mark, "whom can I trust? I fancied the young viper was dead years ago. That false hound, Sadok, let him escape. As I am a living man, he shall pay the penalty of his treason."
Seizing a sword, he burst furiously from the chamber, and rushed madly through the castle in search of the knight who had deceived him. When Sadok saw him coming, with fury in his face, he guessed what had happened, and drew his own sword in haste.
"King Mark," he cried, "beware how you come nigh me. I saved the life of Alexander, and glory in it, for you slew his father cowardly and treacherously. And it is my hope and prayer that the youth may have the strength and spirit to revenge the good Prince Baldwin on his murderer."
"What, traitor! What, dog! Do you dare rail thus at me?" cried the king, and in a voice of fury he bade four knights of his following to slay the traitor.
These knights drew their swords and advanced in a body on Sadok; but he got the wall of them, and fought so shrewdly that he killed the whole four in King Mark's presence.
Then, shaking his clinched fist at the king, he said,—
"I would add your false body to the heap, but that I leave you for Alexander's revenge."
This said, he took horse and rode briskly away, and in all his court Mark could not find a knight willing to pursue him, for all that held with the king feared the old knight's sturdy arm.
King Mark now finding his wrath of no avail, set himself to devising some scheme of treachery by which the danger that threatened him might be removed. In the end he made a compact with Morgan le Fay and the queen of Northgalis, both false sorceresses, in which they agreed to fill the land with ladies that were enchantresses, and with false knights like Malgrim and Breuse Sans Pité, so that the young knight Alexander le Orphelin should be surrounded with magic and treachery, and without doubt be taken prisoner or slain.
Soon after his knighting, Alexander set out for King Arthur's court, and on the way there had many adventures, in which he proved himself a knight of great valor and skill. Among these was a mighty battle with the false knight Malgrim, whom in the end he killed.