The moment was gone. I backed into the grove. I had stood there so that I could take advantage of the trees. I dropped back about twelve feet among them and took two steps to my left. The horse reared at the last possible moment and snorted and whinnied, moist nostrils flaring. It turned aside, tearing up turf. Benedict’s arm moved with near-invisible speed, like the tongue of a toad, and his blade passed through a sapling I’d guess at three inches in diameter. The tree continued to stand upright for a moment, then slowly toppled.
His boots struck the earth and he strode toward me. I had wanted the grove for this reason, also, to make him come to me in a place where a long blade would be hampered by branches and boles.
But as he advanced, he swung the weapon, almost casually, back and forth, and the trees fell about him as he passed. If only he were not so infernally competent. If only he were not Benedict. . . .
“Benedict,” I said, in a normal voice, “she is an adult now, and she is capable of making up her own mind about things.”
But he gave no sign of having heard me. He just kept coming, swinging that great blade from side to side. It made an almost ringing sound as it passed through the air, followed by a soft thukk! as it bit through another tree, slowing only slightly. I raised Grayswandir to point at his breast.
“Come no farther, Benedict,” I said. “I do not wish to fight with you.”
He moved his blade into an attack position and said one word:
“Murderer!”
His hand twitched then and my blade was almost simultaneously beaten aside. I parried the ensuing thrust and he brushed my riposte aside and was at me again.
This time I did not even bother to riposte. I simply parried, retreated, and stepped behind a tree.
“I don’t understand,” I said, beating down his blade as it slid by the trunk and nearly skewered me. “I have not murdered anyone recently. Certainly not in Avalon.”
Another thukk! and the tree was falling toward me. I got out of its way and retreated, parrying.
“Murderer,” he said again.
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Benedict.”
“Liar!”
I stood my ground then and held it. Damn it! It was senseless to die for the wrong reason! I riposted as fast as I could, seeking openings everywhere. There were none.
“At least tell me!” I shouted. “Please!”
But he seemed to be finished with talking. He pressed forward and I had to fall back once more. It was like trying to fence with a glacier. I became convinced then that he was out of his mind, not that that helped me any. With anybody else, an insane madness would cause the loss of some control in a fight. But Benedict had hammered out his reflexes over the centuries, and I seriously believed that the removal of his cerebral cortex would not have altered his movements from their state of perfection.
He drove me steadily back, and I dodged among trees and he cut them down and kept coming. I made the mistake of attacking and barely stopped his counterthrusts inches from my breast. I fought down the first wave of panic that came to me when I saw that he was driving me back toward the edge of the grove. Soon he would have me in the open, with no trees to slow him.
My attention was focused on him so completely that I did not realize what was then to occur until it did.
With a mightly cry, Ganelon sprang from somewhere, wrapping his arms about Benedict and pinning his sword arm to his side.
Even had I really wanted to, though, I did not have the opportunity to kill him then. He was too fast, and Ganelon was not aware of the man’s strength.
Benedict twisted to his right, interposing Ganelon between us, and at the same time brought the stump of his arm around like a club, striking Ganelon in the left temple. Then he pulled his left arm free, seized Ganelon by his belt, swept him off his feet, and threw him at me. As I stepped aside, he retrived his blade from where it had fallen near his feet and came at me again. I barely had time to glance and see that Ganelon had landed in a heap some ten paces to my rear.