“There is a yard around the court ten feet high. It is written on the gate: “If you go in you will never come out alive.”
He went up to the gate. He cleared it at a leap. There were three sons of Kanikinn in an alley playing ball. They spied the champion coming in the gate. Said one of the young men,
“You have come in very nimbly; not so nimbly will you go out.”
“He will go,” said the eldest; “any champion who could make that leap is a gentleman. Don’t speak an angry word till I permit.”
The champion of the red belt then came forward and saluted them as politely as he could. He told them how things were with him; that he had come there to seek the bottle of the water of healing that made the dead alive.
“Well!” said the other, “there is ill luck on you. The king knight of the black castle took that bottle from me seven years ago. There is not a day he does not kill three hundred men, and it is better for you to tarry here with me; I will give you a third of my possessions, for I fear he will kill you.”
“I am thankful to you for your kindness: since I have come so far I will go to meet him whether I live or die.”
He asked was there any short way at all to the castle. He showed him a short way. He said farewell. He went on till he came to the gate, till he cleared the gate out with a leap. He was going with himself then for a while till he saw the black castle. He went into the yard. He could see no one. He feared to go in. Night was coming, and he went in, whether he was to live or die. There was no one within, but the house was full of feathers. He said it was like a slaughter-house. He heard a loud sound coming into the house. He was startled. There was a barrel at the side of the house. He went behind it. Then the light burst from the door, and the king knight of the black castle came. He hung his sword on a peg. The blood was dripping from the tip of it. He had on a coat of steel. He went to put off the coat. The champion of the red belt rose from behind the barrel. “If that is your fighting suit, do not put it off you till you fight with me.”
Said the king knight of the black castle, “It is a man without life you are. I am only after drawing my sword out of the last man of three hundred, but I will not fight you till morning. If it is lodging for the night you want, you will get it.”
“That is what I want.”