Arthurian Legends

araphiel:

I could not see his face at first for his head was enclosed in a helmet with broad cheek pieces that

shadowed his features. The helmet, with its gash for eyes and dark hole for a mouth, was made of
polished iron decorated with swirling patterns of silver and had a high plume of white goose feathers.
There was something deathly about that pale helmet; it had a fearsome, skull-like appearance which
suggested its wearer was one of the walking dead. His cloak, like his plume, was white. The cloak, which
he was fastidious about keeping clean, hung from his shoulders to keep the sun off his long coat of scale
armour. I had never seen scale armour before, though Hywel had told me of it, and seeing Arthur’s I was
overwhelmed with a desire to possess such a coat myself. The armour was Roman and made from
hundreds of iron plates, each no bigger than a thumbprint, sewn in overlapping rows on to a knee-length
coat of leather. The plates were square at the top, where two holes were left for the sewing thread, and
pointed at their base, and the scales overlapped in such a manner that a spear head would always
encounter at least two layers of iron before striking the stout leather beneath. The stiff armour chinked
when Arthur moved, and it was not just iron sounding for his smiths had added a row of golden plates
around the neck and scattered silver scales among the polished iron so that the whole coat seemed to
shimmer. It took hours of polishing each day to prevent the iron rusting, and after every battle a few
plates would be missing and would need to be reforged. Few smiths could make such a coat, and very
few men could afford to buy one, but Arthur had taken his from a Prankish chieftain he had killed in
Armorica. Besides the helmet, cloak and scale coat, he wore leather boots, leather gloves and a leather
belt from which Excalibur hung in its cross-hatched scabbard that was supposed to protect its wearer
against all harm.

— The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell