“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe you could do it,” said Ganelon. “Unless I got lucky, though, I don’t know whether I could. He’s too mean to die easily. While I think I’m still as good a man as I was some years ago, I may be fooling myself. Perhaps I’ve grown soft. I never wanted this damn stay-at-home job!”

“I know,” I said.

“I know,” said Lance.

“Lance,” said Ganelon, “should we do as our friend here says? Should we attack?”

He could have shrugged and equivocated. He did not.

“Yes,” he said. “They almost had us last time. It was very close the night King Uther died. If we do not attack them now, I feel they may defeat us next time. Oh, it would not be easy, and we would hurt them badly. But I think they could do it. Let us see what we can see now, then make our plans for an attack.”

“All right,” said Ganelon. “I am sick of waiting too. Tell me that again after we return and I’ll go along with it.” So we did that thing.

We rode north that afternoon, and we hid ourselves in the hills and looked down upon the Circle. Within it, they worshiped, after their fashion, and they drilled. I estimated around four thousand troops. We had about twenty-five hundred. They also had weird flying, hopping, crawling things that made noises in the night. We had stout hearts. Yeah.

All that I needed was a few minutes alone with their leader, and it would be decided, one way or another. The whole thing. I could not tell my companions that, but it was true.

You see, I was the partly responsible for the whole thing down there. I had done it, and it was up to me to undo it, if I could.

I was afraid that I could not.

In a fit of passion, compounded of rage, horror, and pain, I had unleashed this thing, and it was reflected somewhere in every earth in existence. Such is the blood curse of a Prince of Amber.

We watched them all that night, the Wardens of the Circle, and in the morning we departed.