Free Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon by Richard Monaco Page A

hoped for the best. The sun went higher and higher and the heat burned towards afternoon like an open furnace door.
    He rode steadily, squinting across the general dazzle. He picked up Parsival’s tracks without much trouble and he sat with one leg across leaning on the horses neck, watching the steady flow of matted grass and dusty earth rhythmically marked by the puckered broken circles of unevenly printed horse hooves at once alike and yet as various as snowflakes… it was hypnotic…
    So at first he didn’t realize the fact that there were too many prints, suddenly, and it hit him just as he looked up and saw three riders cresting a grassy rill perhaps a mile ahead. He squinted at them across the lush valley. His stomach clenched at once. He spurred the big roan forward.
    Would I were going to the sea shore to rest in the sun and row a skiff, he thought, yet, instead, I ride on the road of troubles…

 
    LOHENGRIN
     
    Lohengrin had left that morning. He’d made up his mind to get away while his father was absent. He’d planned it for weeks. The young squire, Henry called Hal (whose family had sent him for training, as was the custom) had agreed to go with him. Lohengrin liked the fellow just enough. He thought young Henry of Aud stiff and stuffy, even somewhat foolish; he assumed he was brave enough.
    Because of the season, Lohengrin strapped his light armor to his horse and rode in leather shorts Firetail; Hal wore fighting leathers, long pants and tunic. Both carried swords and daggers.
    “Why wait and suffer what they tell us.” He’d reasoned with the lad who was, in fact, a year his senior, at fifteen. “We’ll strike out for ourselves. Win our knightly spurs in the old style.”
    Lohengrin liked the idea of the old style. He liked stories about more lawless times than theirs. He liked the idea of knights banding together against the world and winning riches and honor and various unclear glories. Mainly he liked the idea of being free to come and go as he pleased and fight whom he chose. He’d been well-educated for a youth of his class; Hal not so much.
    His eyes were dark, intense, magnetic, persuasive. His tongue was precocious and convincing and so the two of them had slipped away just before dawn and by mid-day found themselves miles down the valley on the main south road, roughly paralleling the direction taken by Parsival and Lego, and indeed, Arthur’s emissaries.
    The sun seemed to impact the dust flat on the hoof-chewed surface.
    Lohengrin was sweaty. He hated hot weather. Both of them rode with their armor and fighting gear strapped to the horses’ withers.
    He opened his loose, linen shirt to the navel. His dark, surprisingly thick chest hair showed, matted and wet.
    “Now I have misgivings,” said young squire Henry.
    “What?” wondered Lohengrin. “Are you a girl-heart?”
    “Nay, as you might know. But will they not send after us and bring us back in shame?”
    Lohengrin spat past the horse’s shoulder. He smiled faintly without humor. “Hah,” he uttered. “You will not find me a light burden to carry in any direction. There is no dishonor in what we do.” He wiped his eyes. “I think my flesh will melt to the bone. And sweat to me nothing.”
    Henry took this in. He stared across the lush, rolling fields, serious, uneasy. His face was roundish, with wide slightly protuberant eyes. He didn’t look like he battered his brain with violent thinking; the few ideas he had, however, were nailed down to stay.
    “How will we eat?” he wondered. “After a day or two our supplies will be gone, I think.”
    Lohengrin smiled with real amusement this time. He shook his head in disgust. He realized why he liked having Henry with him: because Lohengrin loved to mock and stir things up. Even if he liked you well enough, he still enjoyed pricking the needle in.
    “You eat beyond what is human,” he commented. “Maybe your grandfather was a horse.”
    Henry’s brown, small eyes looked