“We will give you every advantage,” he said. “We will fight you one by one. Before we begin, will you let me see your face?”
The Abbot hesitated and then laughed.
“Agreed!” he replied. “Provided you let me see yours.”
Both men made a move with their hands, when the eyes of us all were drawn to the figure of a lone rider who had just come into sight around the bend in the road. He was on a horse as black as the raven’s wing. He must have been driving hard for its flanks were covered with white sweat and the froth was dripping from its mouth. The man himself was not much bigger than the Abbot. Although he was clad in a suit of black chained mail and had a casque on with the visor closed, I was able to see that his body was of unusual sturdiness with great breadth of shoulders and thickness of limb.
When he came up he drew rein, and with a smoothness that I had not expected, asked, “A fight, my gentles?”
The Abbot answered.
“—about to begin,” he said.
“Ho, ho!” was the reply. “But, I hope, not the four of you against one?”
I am sure the knight flushed under his helmet at the slyness of the taunt.
“Not at the same time,” he answered, and shifted uneasily on his saddle. “But no matter. He ought to die, for he is enemy of the King.”