nightfox

So, I picked up the gauntlet and accepted

hermitknut's challenge to write a series of drabbles based off Simon Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This is 1 of 5 that I did for the challenge.

Each drabble was to be based off a four-line rhyme taken from the larger poem This is the first:

not all were stunned and stilled
by dread, but duty-bound
to hold their tongues until
their sovereign could respond.

The hush was pregnant. Many a hand rose then fell with purpose frustrated. Others lay still in their owner’s laps, stiff as though cold. No sound but of breathing and shifting feet. All eyes pinned Arthur.

The stranger assessed, he rose and strode forward. The clicking of but one set of boots the only sound in the room until he reached his goal. Silence fell again.

As he drew breath to speak, so did the court and a hundred gasps shattered the shrouding silence. When it came, his speech was soft, smothered somehow by that blanket of breathless expectancy.