going to go find King Rience and kill him. That'll get me back in Arthur's good graces or nothing will."
"I kind of suspect nothing will," said the squire.
"We'll meet again, squire, when they're throwing a sorry-we-banished-you, welcome-back-Sir-Balin party at Camelot!" said Balin, ever the optimist. Also ever dumber than a sack of hammers.
Meanwhile, Arthur put together a great funeral for the Lady of the Lake. It was a really nice funeral. One thing Arthur was good at was funerals.
At the funeral Malory introduces one of King Arthur's best knights whom he hasn't mentioned before, but don't take that to mean that the guy wasn't awesome: Sir Lanceor. Lanceor was the son of Anguish, the king of Ireland, whom you might remember was part of Team Lot & Mister 100 in Book I. However, good Sir Lanceor swore fealty to Arthur and joined the Round Table (which, again, hasn't been set up yet; it doesn't get set up until Book III). He was a solid knight, good at what he did, and the word Malory used to describe him is orgulous, a vocabulary word meaning some blend of haughty and proud and distinguished and arrogant and accomplished.
Lanceor had taken it personally that Balin was the one who got the sword from Wilma and her chastity-scabbard. He'd liked Wilma's spunk, and he spent the whole of the Lady of the Lake's funeral grumbling about it. As soon as the ceremonies are over he approached Arthur.
"Sire," he said. "I beg your permission to hunt down that wretch Balin and execute him for his dreadful crimes."
"You know what? You do that. You kill him right proper," said Arthur. "I cannot express how mad I am at that guy. He should be dead, and you're just the knight to do it."
Lanceor thanked Arthur and made ready to ride after Balin. He left just as Merlin came in.
"Where the hell have you been?" demanded Arthur. "For once I'm in a situation where I need a crazy soothsayer advising me, another damn strange adventure, you know how I hate those things, and you were nowhere to be found!"
"Did I miss anything?" asked Merlin. "It sounds like I missed something."
"Only a strange adventure! All this magic witchery crap has been happening! There was this girl with this sort of sword-in-an-I-don't-know-what-to-call-it, and Balin, the trustee, pulled it out, and Wilma left angry because Balin didn't want to sleep with her, and then the Lady of the Lake showed up and wanted them both dead, and then Balin murdered her! Balin killed the Lady of the Lake right in front of me!"
"Listen," said Merlin. "The girl who was cursed to wear the sword-in-the-chastity-belt..."
"Wilma."
"Wilma, I can assure you fellows, she was a wicked maiden. Worst ever."
"What?"
"See, the thing about Wilma is this. She has, or had, a brother," explained Merlin.
"I'm not connecting the dots here," said Arthur.
"It gets better!" Merlin assured him. "She had a brother who was a good knight, and she also had a boyfriend who was pretty skeevy, and the brother went after the boyfriend to leave her alone, and what with one thing and another the brother was standing over the boyfriend's mangled corpse." You might think this ties into the complex web of backstory between Wilma, Balin, and the Lady of the Lake, but you'd think wrong. Just when you expect Malory to zig, he zags!
"Oh," said Arthur. "That explains everything! Wait, no, it explains nothing."
"I'm telling a story here," said Merlin. "Give it a little time to unspool."
Arthur shuddered. "Fine."
"Anyway, this black-hearted maiden did the worst thing, which is side with her lover over her brother, big no-no, and she went to the most powerful woman available for help: Queen Lile of Avalon, and begged the magic queen to assist her in defeating her brother."
"Whoa," said Arthur. "A ruling queen helping a woman work against the patriarchal system? Sounds dangerously protofeminist!"
"Damn right!" agreed Merlin. "We've got some literally medieval views on gender roles, and even the most proto- of protofeminists are dangerous and subversive witches."
"Yes, of course."
"So Queen Lile gave her a magical sword and told her that only a knight destined to murder a brother with it could pull it from its sheathe. Wilma was under the mistaken impression that the brother in question would be her own; Lile's tricky that way. Armed with the sword, so to speak, Wilma has visited all the various courts in hopes to recruiting someone to do it. She can't tell the knights the truth of the story, so frames it as a curse. Hence the chastity belt angle. She was up to no good the whole time, I swear."
"Man," said Arthur. "That's, wow. Man. When I say I hate strange adventures this is exactly what I'm talking about."
"I wish she hadn't come to your court, but she did, so, water under the bridge." Merlin shrugged in a what can you do? sort of way. "Now Sir Balin is out there with a sword destined to kill someone's brother, which is a shame, because while Balin is as stupid as toast he's also a powerful knight, and with a magic sword he'll be pretty well unstoppable."
"Hmm." Arthur and debated whether or not to mention sending Lanceor after Balin.
"It's also a shame," said Merlin, "inasmuch as Balin's motivation is to honor you and get back in your good graces. Too bad he's doomed, he's not really a bad guy. Plus, again, he's unstoppable in combat. Doubly so with the magic sword."
"On a completely unrelated note, do you know if Sir Lanceor has any brothers or sisters?"
In which Sir Balin gets back in Arthur's good books
Sir Lanceor loaded up with his best armor and weaponry, and rode off after Sir Balin. Balin didn't have all that much of a lead, and wasn't hurrying, so after a good bit of hard riding Lanceor caught up.
"You!" cried Sir Lanceor. "I challenge you in Arthur's name!"
"Hello! My name is Balin! Nice to meet you!" Sir Balin turned and waved. "Is that an Irish accent I detect?"
"Yes," said Lanceor. "I am Irish, but I'm here to kill you on a mission from Arthur!"
"Aw!" Balin was crestfallen. "Is Arthur still mad at me?" he asked. "It's been hours! I was hoping he'd have gotten over it by now. She was an evil lady. The guest of the court whose head I lopped off while she was in mid-conversation with the king, I mean. She was so bad."
"Shut up and joust!" cried Lanceor. Which would be a good title for a reality show wherein contestants compete for the title of America's Next Top Jouster.
So, they jousted. And to make a long story slightly shorter, Balin killed the hell out of Sir Lanceor.
Mere moments later, as Balin stood over Lanceor's dead body, another figure arrived on a horse, a maiden! Not Wilma, the maiden from whom Balin took his new sword, but a different one. Specifically, it was Columbe, Lanceor's girlfriend.
"Noooo!" Columbe sobbed, and clutched at Lanceor's corpse. Then she picked up Lanceor's sword, and Balin tried to get it away from her but somehow in the confusion she ended up stabbing herself in the chest. "Oh! I have just now committed suicide!" she cried. "Sir Balin definitely didn't murder me!" And then she died.
That's how Balin would relate the story to people afterwards, anyway.
"I can't help feeling partially responsible," said Balin to himself. "If I hadn't angered Arthur then he wouldn't have sent this Irish knight after me, and then I wouldn't have had to kill him, and then this maiden wouldn't have picked up his sword and then carefully balanced it on its end on the ground and leaped upon it, stabbing herself in the chest and leaving a wound that so closely resembles a conventional stab-wound such as a man like myself might have inflicted by stabbing her."
Moved by this unhappy tableau, he turned away, and looked down (this whole scene had taken place on a mountaintop, did Malory forget to mention that?) at the forest below. He watched another rider coming up, and it was, by strange chance, his brother Sir Balan.
That's right: Sir Balin and Sir Balan. No way that's needlessly confusing.
"Your squire found me," said Balan. "He was pretty drunk but I got that you were out of prison, so I came up to this mountaintop to look for you."
"Worked out
," said Balin.
"So what's new?" asked Balan.
"Aw, man, I was in Camelot, all right, minding my own business? And then this girl wearing nothing but a scabbard wanted me to pull out her sword! And then she wanted it back!"
"The nerve!" said Balan.
"I know! So I told her off. Then I'm leaving, and Arthur is like, don't go, but I'm like, I'm going! And then the Lady of the Lake shows up!"
"No way!" said Balan.
"So naturally I kill her, and suddenly I'm the bad guy!"
"Outrageous!" said Balan.
"So of course I ride off and then this knight comes up and tries to joust me, so of course I kill him."
"Of course," said Balan.
"And then his lady-friend rides up and she's sobbing and screaming and she grabs his sword –"
"Whoa!" said Balan. "Ladies aren't allowed to touch swords!"
"That's what I said!" cried Balin. "And then she stabbed herself in the chest. No way did I kill her."
"Wow," said Balan.
"I know!" said Balin. "That's why ladies aren't allowed to touch swords. It's a safety thing."
"Still, it's all in God's hands, right?" said Balan.
"Yeah. The real tragedy here is that Arthur's mad at me," said Balin. "I have a plan to deal with that, though. I'm going to murder King Rience, that'll make everyone love me again. I might have to murder some more people along the way, but once I kill Rience everything will be great again and I'll go back to Camelot and there will be a pizza party. I know, through some means Malory hasn't bothered to specify, that Rience is currently occupying Castle