Ben climbed to the top of the wall overlooking the drawbridge, Willow and Bunion at his side, and stopped dead.
Armored all in silver, its lance tilted upward in salute, a solitary knight waited at the far end of the causeway. It was instantly recognizable even from this distance. Ben Holiday found himself looking at the Paladin.
He stared in speechless shock, unable to believe what he was seeing. The Paladin? Here, unsummoned? Had it come to do battle with its master? Had Rydall somehow subverted it?
“This can’t be possible,” he muttered.
“That isn’t the Paladin.” Willow was the first to say it. “It can’t be. You haven’t summoned it, and no one else can. This knight is a fraud, a pretender.”
But a realistic-looking one for all that, Ben thought darkly. Well, there was no help for it. He was faced with the same dilemma that he had confronted when the giant had appeared. Waiting was pointless. If he refused to meet the knight without, he would all too soon find it within.
Ben put his hands on the stones of the castle wall and tried to decide if he was strong enough to do battle again so soon. For while his transformation into the Paladin required little of him physically, it was excessively demanding mentally and emotionally. When the battle was finished and another challenger lay dead, it was his psyche that the shards of battle would have damaged. He stared down grim-faced at this newest threat from Rydall. This one, at least, was faceless, but the prospect of doing battle with himself—or a part of himself—was unnerving, even if it wasn’t really a part but only something that seemed to be…
He gave up on his ruminations. Too much of that could be deadly. There was no choice offered him in this matter. If Rydall sent three champions this day, he would still have to fight them all.
“Ben,” Willow said softly, her arm linking into his.
He nodded. “I know; you don’t have to say it. But I can’t make that thing down there go away by ignoring it.”
“There will be another trick to winning,” she said, “just as there was with the giant.”
She released him reluctantly then, and he brought forth the medallion. A moment later he summoned the Paladin. He felt a measure of relief when it appeared in a flare of light from out of the forest at the edge of the meadow; now he could be certain that it was not the real Paladin who served Rydall. His protector wheeled toward the pretender, lance lowered for the attack. Ben felt himself transported once more, flowing easily with the change this time, used to it since this morning, almost welcoming it. The Paladin’s armor closed about him, its memories stirred in his blood, and the expectation of battle was a rush of heat that flooded through bone and muscle and into the iron of his weapons.
The Paladin kicked his warhorse in the flanks, and the beast surged forward to the attack. Ahead, the false knight turned and spurred toward him in response. Lances lowered, they raced across the grassy stretch of the meadow in a thunder of hooves and met with a clash of iron and splintered oak as both lances shattered into pieces.
Still mounted, shields cracked and scarred, the combatants wheeled back toward each other, battle-axes in hand. They rushed together a second time, weapons swinging. The Paladin deflected the other knight’s heavy blade, and his adversary did the same with his. A second blow got through, but so did one of his adversary’s. The knights hammered at each other, and then both axes snapped at the hilt and fell away, broken and useless.
Reining their warhorses about savagely to get into position, the combatants reached for their broadswords.
A third time they came together, the blades of their broadswords striking fire in the late afternoon sun, sparks exploding from their weapons and armor. Their horses were weakening, snorting and huffing from the strain of bearing their armored riders and absorbing the shock of the blows dealt. Finally both went down together, throwing their riders free, rising shakily, and standing with heads lowered and blood on their muzzles, unable to continue.