So Uwaine has a big meal and a good night’s sleep, and in the morning he goes to church and has some breakfast and then he emerges from the Lady of the Rock’s castle, to joust with Edward and Hue.  And they jousted, blah blah blah, Malory gives a detailed yet incredibly boring blow-by-blow of this combat.  Long story short, Uwaine being outnumbered two to one isn’t as crippling a disadvantage as you might expect.  At one point Edward hits Uwaine so hard the Lady of the Rock thinks Uwaine would surely die, but instead he gets back up and they fight and fight and fight and hours go by and it’s like watching stock car racing, is how I’m imagining it at this point.  So exciting you want to just change the channel.  Or, as Malory puts it, “they fought together for five hours as men raged out of reason.”

Finally, after a full day of this, Uwaine slits Edward’s throat right through his armor, and Hue surrenders.  Uwaine accepts the surrender, which is mighty knightly of him, and they embrace and go into Castle Of-the-Rock together.  The Lady of the Rock throws a party, everyone’s invited, admittedly Sir Hue is not really in a party spirit, but still, he’s included.  Uwaine gets Hue to agree to visit Camelot and present himself to Arthur and swear fealty, and the Lady gets her lands back.

Sir Uwaine and Ursula end up spending several months with the Lady of the Rock, as it takes Uwaine that long to convalesce from his wounds.  I suppose this is another way that old-school Advanced Dungeons and Dragons emulates Malory: a high-level fighter might have eighty hit points, and in a fight might get knocked down to single-digit numbers from that maximum, but recovering afterwards requires a number of days of bed rest equal to the number of hit points lost.  So after a big battle the fighter would need to spend months recuperating, except of course the knight would just get someone to cast cure moderate wounds on him a few times and be fresh as a daisy.

Anyway.  At the close of the year of strange adventures, Uwaine and Ursula sally forth from Castle Of-the-Rock back to the Forest of Arroy, where they meet with Sir Marhaus and Annette, and Sir Gawaine and Trixie OH WAIT make that Sir Gawaine looking surly and guilty and utterly sans Trixie.

“Where’s Trixie?”

“Yeah, where’s Trixie?”

“I lost Trixie.  I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What —“

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!”

“But —“

“Just drop it you guys!”

“Well, okay, how was your year? I won a tournament and killed a giant!”

“Cool! I won several tournaments and fought for the Lady of the Rock!”

“…”

“Gawaine?  How’d it go, other than the Trixie thing?”

“…I don’t know how else to say I don’t want to talk about it.”