So Arthur’s badly wounded, and disarmed, and Accolon clearly has the upper hand.  Accolon paces around Arthur, toying with him, flashing Excalibur at him.  “Knight (whom I totally don’t know who really is),” he says, “you’re beaten!  Surrender and I won’t kill you!  It wouldn’t be sporting to kill you, as badly as you’re already beaten.  I mean, your sword broke, dude.  Fight over!”

“Nope,” says Arthur.  “Not going to do it.  See, I promised this guy that if he released his twenty prisoners I’d fight to my last breath, and here we are.  I’m not going back on that.  If that means you have to kill me while I’m unarmed, then it’ll be your shame, not mine.”

“Damn it,” says Accolon, “then I guess I’m wasting my time talking to a dead man,” and he wallops Arthur hard, knocking him down, but then Arthur executes an extremely improbably move, somehow turning getting knocked down into a low flying tackle, and ends up slamming into Accolon with his shield.  I don’t get it either.  It’s some kind of crazy jousting judo move, redirecting Accolon’s momentum back onto him?  Anyway, Arthur is still the best.

This move doesn’t actually net Arthur anything, though, other than inspire Nimue, who’s still watching the joust from Arthur’s corner, to go ahead and finally take action.  Accolon swings Excalibur at Arthur, and thanks to Nimue’s magic, he swings so hard that Excalibur goes flying out of his hands!  Another spell nowhere to be found in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook.  Then, confident she’s been more helpful than Merlin would have been under the circumstances, Nimue leaves.

Arthur snatches up Excalibur, naturally, and immediately he recognizes it.  “Bad Excalibur!” he scolds it.  “Bad sword!  You shouldn’t go running off like that!”  And then he turns to Accolon with his steely eye, and realizes that Accolon is wearing his magic scabbard.

“Hey!  Not only do you have my magic sword, you have my magic scabbard!”  Arthur grabs the scabbard, rips it off of Accolon, and throws it out into the stands!  The crowd goes wild!  Accolon suddenly starts gushing blood from all the places Arthur wounded him before!

“Man, guy, this is how it is.  You hurt me pretty badly with my own magic sword, and now I’ve got it, and you have no magic scabbard protecting you, and basically this is it for you, guy, fair warning.”  And then Arthur hits him one time with Excalibur and Accolon collapses with his helmet flying off of him and landing somewhere near the scabbard!

Accolon bleeds from the eyes and the nose and the ears and the mouth!

“Now you’re going to die,” says Arthur.

Accolon burbles through the blood something about how great Arthur is and how Accolon was a fool to agree to fight him, but agree to fight him he did and Accolon can’t go back on that.

Arthur pauses, because now that Accolon’s helmet is off he thinks he recognizes the guy.  It’s tricky, because of how bashed-in Accolon’s face is (recall just the same problem with Balin and Balan back in Book II?) so Arthur asks Accolon his name, before he slays him.

Accolon confirms that he’s Sir Accolon, of the court of King Arthur, knight one rank below the Knights of the Round Table.

“Well hell!  Accolon, my sister’s lover!  Accolon, with whom just yesterday I was having a strange adventure involving a free meal on a ship lined with silk!” cries Arthur, and sets aside Excalibur.  “Accolon, what the hell?  How did you come to be jousting me with my own sword?  What kind of lousy strange adventure is happening here?  Is it a separate strange adventure, or more of the same one?”