The Appendix, Unused

The declaration promised an appendix. The Book keeps its promises. This is that appendix. It is shorter than the knights expected.

Item the first. At eleven minutes past eight the Chronicler stood up and told the Realm he would best forty-five White Knights at Falador castle within two hours. He warned the weather. He gave the knights leave to sing a hymn. Forty-five was meant to be an overreach. In the past he had managed seventeen and a little more in an hour. Forty-five asked for twenty-two and a half. The half was a knight he had not yet thought about.

Item the second. He reached the castle in two minutes. One minute later a White Knight struck him at the gate, before he had properly arrived, and left him at sixty of eighty-one. The knights of Falador do not wait to be formally received. The Book holds no grudge against them. The Book holds a grudge against the gate.

Item the third. Something then happened that the record calls waking. The Chronicler woke at Falador castle, at the castle he was already standing in, and arrived there a second time. Nobody else at the castle arrives twice. He did not ask to.

Item the fourth. Five knights fell. Forty were never asked. The Labour was abandoned at about six minutes, which is a tenth of an hour. There were no deaths. The title, Warden of the Fallen Forty-Five, is not claimed. It stays in its case, polished, in the hall of things that were said aloud.

The hymn was not sung. It is not in the record, so it does not go in the Book. The room for it is still here, blank, as an appendix should be.