osprey_archer | A Garter as a Lesser Gift

At long last! The moment you've all been waiting for! A Garter as a Lesser Gift is now available! (There WILL also be a paperback, whenever Amazon deigns to release said paperback to the public. We shall see!)

Usually I try to post a sample before the book is actually published, but this time I did NOT, so you get it today instead! Here is chapter 1, A Garter as a Lesser Gift, "What if the Knights of the Round Table were airmen in the RAF in World War II and that asshole green knight showed up?"

Chapter 1

The night after Lancelot went down over France, the squadron went to the Green Dragon to get drunk. Even young Percy went with them, although he did not drink, but nursed a ginger beer as he watched Gawain and Kay pretend to play at chess. Ironsides sat a little way off, at the edge of the group as he always was with any group, downing drink after drink without so much as a twitch in his set face.

Their squadron leader, Art, sat in the corner with his pint. Like a clockwork figure he lifted it to his lips from time to time, but he did not drink, only sat with his face white and drawn.

Lots of airmen died that way. So they had lost Tristram just last month. But they had all loved Lancelot, and they were heavy with rage and grief.

Kay sat at the chessboard with his head on one hand and his bishop in the other. At the bar Ironsides called, “Another,” and his voice seemed to wake Kay from a dream. He set down the bishop in a place he would not have chosen if he had been thinking about it.

Gawain with a negligent swoop of his knight took the bishop off the board. “I wasn’t done,” Kay protested.

“You took your hand off your bishop,” Gawain said.

“I was thinking!” Kay was growing red.

“Well, think faster next time,” Gawain advised. Kay knocked over the board, and Gawain surged to his feet, and Kay reared up and they glared at each other, spoiling for the fight that would relieve their feelings without the shame of tears.

The door flew open. Dead leaves skittered in before the wind.

They all swung toward the door, even Art, heads lifting, eyes widening with hope. But their cries of greeting died on their lips, for it was not Lancelot.

In the doorway stood a massive man, so large that he seemed to shoulder aside the door jambs as he pushed his way into the pub. All in green he was: a long green overcoat, and green trousers tucked into green boots, and a green bowler hat all on top. With so much green about him even his skin seemed tinged green; but his lips were red, and his teeth flashed white as he called, “A flagon of ale, mistress!”

The proprietress, Alice, served him in silence. Indeed they all were silent, watching, united now against this common enemy.

This stranger was not Lancelot: that would have been enough. He was a civilian, dressed all in green, and he would not be flying over France tomorrow night.

The man in green returned their stares with the same insolent effrontery with which they stared at him. Ironsides shifted on his stool, and Kay stood taut, but they made no move. It would not do to brawl in Alice’s pub, for there was no other pub near, and to have no place to drink was not to be thought of.

“Welcome,” said Art, with his quiet courtesy. “What brings you here?”

For the aerodrome was far from anywhere, and it was rare to see anyone but airmen in the pub.

“I came,” said the man in green, “to see our famous RAF.” He took a long pull on his ale. “Our brave RAF,” he said, and drained the pint, and slammed it down on the bar. “Another,” he called, but Alice did not move, and neither did the airmen. Then the man in green let out an unbearably merry laugh that filled the small low room. “Our gallant RAF! Are none of you man enough to fight me?”

Gawain and Kay and Ironsides all started for him, but fell back when Art lifted a hand. “We do not waste time in brawls with our own people,” he said, and his voice was cold, though still courteous. “England needs all the men she has to hold off the Luftwaffe.”

“Fair enough,” the man in green said easily. “What about a friendly contest, then? I can out-shoot the best of your marksmen.”

“Oh no, you can’t!” said Kay, and his face now was beet-red. There were hands on Gawain’s shoulders, Kay’s and Ironsides’ and even Percy’s, pushing him forward, and a chorus of voices all saying, “Gawain can out-shoot you any day!” And Gawain grinned with cheerful menace.

“That little slip of a thing?” the man in green said. For Gawain was the shortest and slightest of them, smaller even than young Percy.

Low and cool, as if he had a Luftwaffe plane dead to rights, Gawain said, “I can hit any target you can set.”

The man in green grinned. “I’ll wager I can match you shot for shot.”

Coins rang on the bar. Voices shouted for empty bottles, and Alice obliged, with a glitter in her eyes that said she too would have come to see this civilian out-shot, if only she didn’t have to watch the pub.

Unsteady on their feet with the drink, they stumbled out into the windy night. It was All Hallow’s Eve, and dark, with only a sliver of a moon. But they did not have far to go, only down the lane a little to the field by the old orchard, where the sweet rotting scent of the windfall apples tainted the air.

The airmen set the bottles all in a row atop the low stone fence. Gawain waited till the airmen had all come back, swaying a little as he stood, for he had drunk quite a lot.

But his hand was steady as he drew his gun. He lifted the comforting weight of his revolver, and took aim at the bottle at the far right, and his aim was true. The bullet shattered the bottle, and all the airmen hollered and smacked him on the back.

In response, the man in green shot the bottle on the far left. The glass broke loudly in the sullen silence.

Gawain shot two bottles, and the airmen hollered again. Then the man in green shot two bottles too, and with a mocking laugh he said, “Make it more difficult, won’t you?”

“What we need is a moving target,” said Kay, with a meaningful look at the man in green, who only guffawed in response.

The airmen bunched tighter around Gawain, their anger like a fog. Art said for Gawain’s ears only, “End this if you can.”

Gawain moved his revolver to his left hand, and quick as a flash he shot every second bottle off the fence. The airmen screamed as if he’d shot Hitler himself.

But they fell silent as abruptly as a wireless switched off when the man in green also tossed his gun to his left hand, and with an insulting casualness shot all the bottles Gawain had left. Then he spun the revolver round his finger, like a gunslinger in a Western flick, and he said, “Is that all you’ve got?”

There was a wrathful silence. Then Kay, who could always contrive, shouted, “Gather up some windfalls!” and the airmen scattered into the orchard, hunting for fallen apples to shoot.

“Ah,” said the man in green, a mocking note in his voice. He stood with folded arms in the moonlight. “Now we’ll have some sport!”

The airmen came back, their pockets bulging with fallen apples. “Percy, will you throw them for us?” Art asked, for Percy had bowled in county cricket, in the remote hamlet where he lived before the war.

Percy lobbed the apples into the air, hard fast throws with a trick to them, so that their flight would break at strange moments. Gawain and the man in green shot the apples down, and the airmen cheered and shouted as if they were shooting enemy aircraft. “Get that Messerschmidt!” “There’s a Focke-Wulf!” “Blow him out of the sky, Gawain!”

But then the revolvers ran out of shot, and clicked harmlessly as the last apple fell unharmed and rolled against the man’s green boot. He nudged his toe beneath it, and flipped it up into his hand.

“Here’s a shot for you!” the man in green called. And he stood up tall, and balanced the apple on his head.

Abruptly the airmen stopped laughing. The man in green stood in the moonlight, fearless and alone, while they huddled together in the darkness.

“Don’t do it, Gawain,” Art advised. “There might be an accident.”

“You have to do it,” Kay cried.

“Don’t do it,” cried Percy. “Don’t shoot, Gawain.”

“Don’t be a coward, man,” growled Ironsides.

Gawain reloaded his revolver. It hung heavy in his hand.

“Frightened, lad?” the man in green called. His voice, hitherto crisp enough for an announcer on the BBC, had taken on a burr. “I don’t blame you a bit. Ye’ll have to let me take the same shot after, you remember!”

“I’m not afraid of anything!” Gawain yelled. And he shot the green man in the face.

The man remained upright, blood trickling down his cheek, and the blood looked black in that dark night. The apple still balanced atop his head.

“Gawain,” gasped Percy, grasping his arm. “Oh, Gawain…”

Gawain jerked a step forward. But just as he moved, the man moved too, lurching toward them as if he was walking.

In fact, he was walking. In long strides he came toward them, and as he walked he gave a little twitch of his head, so the apple fell into his hand.

All the airmen stood pressed together like a flock of sheep. As one body they flinched when the green man’s white teeth sank into the apple’s crisp flesh, the bite as loud as a gunshot. The green man chewed, and swallowed, and wiped the juice from his lips, which smeared the blood trickling down his chin.

Then he laughed his great booming laugh, and playfully he told Gawain, “I promised that I would match you shot for shot.”

Gawain staggered forward a step, in front of the huddle of airmen. “Sir,” he said, almost stammering, but rigidly upright. “I am ready.”

The green man tossed the apple to Gawain, and Gawain caught it in both hands, and nearly staggered again at the sight of the dark blood stains on the apple’s white flesh. He moved to put the apple on his head; but then the green man laughed again, and said, “Not now, my lad. How do you expect me to shoot when you’ve put out my eye?”

The green man covered the distance between them in two strides, and bent down so they could all see that it was true. His right eye was gone, but aside from the blood there was none of the gore of injury, and the hole was as blank and black as the barrel of a gun.

“If you look hard enough you’ll see the stars on the other side,” the green man said. “The bullet passed straight through!” And he threw his head back and laughed, like it was a good joke.

Art put a hand on Gawain’s shoulder. Gawain with a shudder shrugged it off.

“But I’m not such a good shot with one eye,” the green man said. “It wouldn’t be fair to make me take my shot now—to me or to you! Wouldn’t want me to miss, now would you?” And again he boomed out a laugh. “No. We shall have to meet again. When is your next leave?”

“Christmas to New Year’s Day.” Gawain spoke through numb lips. “If they don’t change it.”

“They won’t change it,” the green man said.

“They might!” Kay snapped.

“They won’t change it,” the green man repeated, and although he had no way of knowing, yet they knew he spoke the truth. “On the last day of your leave, you will meet me at the Green Chapel.”

Gawain could not speak. It was Art who asked, “Where is that?”

“Oh, not far from here,” the green man said. “You’ll find it.”

And he strode off, and they only stood and stared after him, till he disappeared in the shadows beneath the apple trees. Then Kay cried, “Find him!”

They sought the green man all through the orchard. But they did not find him. He had disappeared in the shadows as if he had never been; and they might have believed he was a dream, except that Gawain still held the blood-stained apple in his hands.