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Kors Durius, his rough voice booming. The Dux was a huge man, his face encircled with a shaggy gray beard. “I dub you Sir Arandar of Tarlion, a knight of the realm.” He tapped Arandar on either shoulder with his sword. “Now rise, and let’s all get drunk.”
    Cassius helped Arandar to rise, his formal armor clanking, and both men bowed to the Dux. Cheers and applause echoed through the hall.
    The survivors of Novindum cheered the loudest of all. 
    Perhaps Orlan had been right, and Arandar had saved these people for the wrong reason. But they had been spared from Qazamhor’s altar. More, Arandar had done it through steel and courage and the help of God, through the valor of his men-at-arms and Crowlacht’s ferocity. The blood of the High King had not been able to help.
    Sir Arandar of Tarlion, knight of the realm of Andomhaim, might have been the High King’s bastard son, but he was still his own man.
    THE END
    Thank you for reading THE PALADIN'S TALE. If you liked the story, please consider leaving a review at your ebook site of choice. To receive immediate notification of new releases, sign up for my newsletter , or watch for news on my Facebook page . Turn the page for a bonus chapter from the first book in the FROSTBORN series, Frostborn: The Gray Knight .

Bonus Chapter from FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT
    A letter to the surviving kings, counts, and knights of Britain:
    I am Malahan Pendragon, the bastard son of Mordred, himself the bastard son of Arthur Pendragon, the High King of all Britain.
    You know the grievous disasters that have befallen our fair isle. My father betrayed my grandfather, and perished upon the bloody field of Camlann, alongside many of the mightiest knights and kings of Britain. Before that came the war of Sir Lancelot’s treachery and the High Queen’s adultery, a war that slew many noble and valiant knights.
    Now there is no High King in Britain, Camelot lies waste, and the pagan Saxons ravage our shores. Every day the Saxons advance further and further, laying waste to our fields and flocks, butchering our fighting men, making slaves of our womenfolk, and desecrating holy churches and monasteries. Soon all of Britain shall lie under their tyranny, just as the barbarians overthrew the Emperor of Rome.
    My lords, I write not to claim the High Kingship of Britain – for Britain is lost to the Saxons – but to offer hope. My grandfather the High King is slain, and his true heir Galahad fell seeking the grail, so therefore this burden has fallen to me, for there is no one else to bear it. 
    Britain is lost, but we may yet escape with our lives.
    For I have spoken with the last Keepers of Avalon, and by their secret arts they have fashioned a gate wrought of magic leading to a far distant realm beyond the circles of this world, certainly beyond the reach of the heathen Saxons. Here we may settle anew, and build homes and lives free from the specter of war.
    I urge you to gather all your people, and join me at the stronghold of Caerleon. We shall celebrate the feast of Easter one final time, and then march to the plain of Salisbury, to the standing stones raised by the wizard Merlin. 
    The gate awaits, and from there we shall march to a new home.
    Sealed in the name of Malahan Pendragon, in the Year of Our Lord 538.
     
    ###
     
    The day it all began, the day in the Year of Our Lord 1478 when the blue fire filled the sky from horizon to horizon, Ridmark Arban returned to the town of Dun Licinia.
    He gazed at the town huddled behind its walls of gray stone, his left hand gripped tight around a long wooden staff. He had not been here in over five years, not since the great battle against Mhalek and his horde of orcs, and then Dun Licinia had been little more than a square keep ringed by a wooden wall, an outpost named in honor of the Dux of the Northerland. 
    Now it was a prosperous town of four thousand people, fortified by a wall of stone. Ridmark saw the towers of a small keep within the