The green knight cut through air full of her scent and alighted on a honeysuckle vine. It trembled just a little under the mantis’s great heft, shedding beads of water onto the stately leaves of the iris perched beneath him. The dawn was gray. The knight washed his face with a dewdrop; he had been scouring the wilderness for her all night. He turned his head in all directions, cocked his large eyes, and breathed in deeply. After some wordless consideration, he crept slowly up the vine, claw then foot, foot then claw. She was near.
His stealth was so honed that the plant hardly noticed his presence, but a rival knight did. He, too, had scented her. Smaller, garbed in callow yellow plate, he was not so young to think that a fair fight with this green knight would end any way but his mortal failure. So he darted from the highest leaf of the iris to a dangling offshoot of the honeysuckle, catching it by the crook of his forearm and dragging himself up, eyes trained always on the green knight. As he scrabbled upward, his foot slipped and severed a red flower. It fell unnoticed to the grass. He slunk up the vine, desperate not to the let the plant shake and give his ambush away.
But the green knight was nimble, his stride long, and already he was summiting the branch, and if the yellow knight were to kill him before he could secure the princess, he would have to take some risks. He let out his wings, and though they hummed, they sped him up the length of the vine. He came upon his rival just as the green knight realized he was there.
The green knight swung one deathly sharp arm at him, disfiguring the yellow knight’s wing. He clattered into the vine at the feet of his enemy, barely catching himself. The green knight lunged and swiped again, forcing the blades of his arm into the yellow knight’s back.
“Bastard,” the green knight growled. He had no energy to spare for this fight. The ascent to the princess’s bower would be but the death of him. He hacked at the young challenger’s leg, severing it at the foot.
With a childish yowl, the yellow knight swiped and thrashed. He aimed for the green knight’s feet, but they were out of his reach and the larger mantis parried his blows with ease. He staggered forward, but the move was so agonizing he dropped to a knee. He should surrender, drop from the vine and fly as best he could to some sanctuary, find another mate. But damn it, he would not countenance humiliation, not when she was so near, beckoning him. Another blow dully thudded off his head, but the yellow mantis tried not to notice. With a groan he forced himself up and caught the next blow of the green knight with a forearm. Raking at the joint, he severed his foe’s weapon and forced him to take flight.
The green knight advanced up the vine – he could see her now, radiant by the golden light of the sun, eyes wide with adoration and awe, watching him vanquish this troublesome pest. He hardly felt the loss of his arm at all. Buckling his feet into the tangles of the honeysuckle, he let the challenger come upon him. The young knight leapt awkwardly, wounded, exposing his belly as he attacked. The green knight struck.
All energy drained from the yellow knight as his foe’s weapon punched through the soft belly of his armor, not quite hardened enough. The green knight’s stern eyes bore into him, angry, not triumphant. He was heaving, old, and tired, and though he had the yellow knight in size, he had almost lost the fight. That gave the yellow knight some silly satisfaction, as though in death he could finally relax. There was no more worrying if he would fail and die without mating like so many others; the end had come and he would die a failure. But the failure was not as bitter as the dishonor he had shoveled upon himself all his life, fearing this very end. Yes, he could relax. He knew how his saga ended.
The green knight lowered him into the vines, struggled with his forefoot to scrape the challenger off his arm. His body was all but spent. Their pale bloods littered the vine, mixed into the dew. He dare not even bend to drink; he feared he would never be able to rise again.
Instead he turned to the goddess upon the hill, just three lengths of his body away, but also ten thousand miles. She smiled benevolently, he imagined, for her face was cast in shadow as the sun rose over her head in epiphany. He laughed, delirious as the yellow knight, as he crawled up the vines and fell into her embrace, into her capacious, adulating grasp. She crushed him tight, and he let her. Glory, he wanted to shout, but he had no strength. He looked into his bride’s face and did not see the ravenous, desperate maw that decapitated him, but a grateful smile, the beneficence of a goddess.
His coming was a relief to the female mantis. And the arrival of the other further eased her mind. She was dangerously near to starvation, and without their nourishment she would not have been able to lay any eggs. Her entire life would have been in vain. Once she had crumpled his head, had begun to take him in, the green knight’s body, ringing in glorious ecstasy, writhed and pulled itself closer to her. He saw no more, could not speak, nor even think; he felt no pain, only jubilation as he entered her, the culmination of a long, desperate life, satisfaction at knowing that his blood would carry on past him, into future summers. His passing was easy.
By the time the last of the dew had burned away, she had finished him. Gorging next on what remained of the yellow knight, yes, she knew that her brood would be healthy, would carry her blood and the blood of both these brave knights. And then, at last, she would rest.