The Dragon and the Fair M

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "It's all right," he said when he rejoined them. 'That was a good wolf, one I know well. He'll be going ahead of us and will come back to give the alarm if there're enemies up ahead."

  "The horses have had enough of a chance to breathe," said the Bishop. "We ride on!"

  A man screamed.

  Jim looked to see who it had been, but even with the aid of the moonlight through the already leaf-bare limbs of the elms, it was impossible to tell. Identifying the screamer was beside the point now.

  All around the small rise, the open, grassy earth that ringed them had become hidden from sight. Where it had been was now a swarming mass of rodentlike bodies: large rats, dead black in the moonlight, each of them carried a miniature, almost humanlike figure, riding it and carrying an equally miniature spear tipped with a gleaming, pointed head that glittered and reflected the moonlight so brightly that the spear shafts seemed tipped with fire.

  But that was not all of it. As the first wave of these began to mount the slope, they grew and changed into full-sized, near-caricatures of armed knights—no longer riding the now-vanished rodents. Their shapes were not quite right, their armor seemed to be growing out of their bodies rather than clothing them, and their helmets completely hid their faces.

  But the swords they carried ready in their hands reflected the moonlight as clearly as had the tiny spear tips—and they, at least, were real and dangerous.

  But the imitation men were not. They were slow and clumsy with their weapons. Jim had more than time to get his own sword out and ward off the awkward blow being aimed at him. His opponent was acting as if he had never used a sword before in his life, and Jim's memory of the long hours in which Brian had tried to drill the rudiments of fourteenth-century sword-fighting into him suddenly filled him with confidence.

  He swept up his sword accordingly, to dispose of this inept enemy in front of him—and suddenly discovered that victory was not to be won so simply.

  An excruciating pain just above his right ankle made him change what might have been a decisive blow into a clumsy parry of another awkward swipe being made at him by his enemy. Glancing down, he saw the ground about all their feet was swarming with more of the original small rat-riding figures, one of these was just letting go of the spear he had driven into the vulnerable point below Jim's right knee where two pieces of his leg armor came together.

  The pain was so piercing he could hardly think, let alone fight. Too piercing, in fact, to be just the ordinary discomfort of something not much bigger than the quill of a porcupine. The point had been poisoned—and with magic. As a knight he was forbidden to use magic to help him fight, but if his opponent dealt in magic—or magick—it was a different story. Jim disintegrated the tiny spear, eliminated the pain, and cast a protective ward completely about himself.

  He was immune now to the other rodent-riders who were angrily—but now uselessly—jabbing at chinks in his armor, but failing to touch him by a fraction of an inch. Free of distractions, Jim finished off his larger opponent with a couple of heartfelt blows, and went hunting for more to destroy. His blood was up now, but at the same time he saw there were too many of their attackers to win against in the end.

  A wild sense of despair went through him, but at the same time came the breathy little voice of Hob almost frantically now in his ear.

  "Fire, m'lordl Put fire all around us! They like it warm, but they cannot come through flame as we hobs do."

  There was no time to question. No time to count the expense of the magic needed to produce flames with no fuel to feed them. Jim cast a ring of fire around all the humans on the hill.

  A high-pitched, but savage, moaning sigh from many nonhuman voices rose—and the overwhelming numbers of their attackers recoiled from them like the wave of a dark sea, seen in the firelight. They still threatened with their spears, but from beyond the flames.

  Hob had been right. Left within the magic fire were only the dead—the few men-at-arms able to limp about had quickly and savagely hunted them down and slain them—and the slain, impossibly, sank into the solid ground and disappeared. Jim looked over beyond the leaping flames, but there was nothing to be seen. Their clumsy man-sized attackers had vanished.

  "Sir James!" It was the voice of the Bishop. "Sir James! To me, I say!"

  Jim went toward the voice and found the churchman still on his feet, trying to aid his chaplain to stand against the pain of two spears in him—but with the shaft of one of the same spears projecting from the Bishop's own right calf.

  The Bishop was sweating copiously, but remained upright himself. Norman, as well as Christian, courage—and possibly consciousness of the example he must set those who followed him—was probably keeping him there. Half the rest of their party was on the ground—none dead or badly wounded, but hunched up and rolling around in tight-lipped silence with the stoicism of their time.

  "It was demon-work—" gasped the Bishop, as Jim appeared. "Demon-magic, was it not?"

  "It was," said Jim. Looking at the Bishop and around the battlefield, he decided In for a penny, in for a pound—and used his magic to rid them all of their pains and the spears causing them, while doing away with the magical fire. Magic might be no good at curing the slightest illness, but it worked wonders with wounds. The Bishop looked startled, like all the rest, then, understanding, first frowned severely at Jim, then abruptly wiped his face on a muffler wound around his neck, and looked away with the innocent, unconcerned, angelic expression of one who sees no evil.

  "Mount up!" he roared. "We ride!"

  But here now was Aargh, trotting unconcernedly up to Jim—everybody else hastily made way for him—looking as if he had been engaged in an adventure with a porcupine, there were so many little spear shafts sticking out of his hairy coat.

  "Make yourself useful!" he growled at Jim. "And use those things you call hands to clean these slivers from me."

  "Of course," said Jim, swiftly magicking them away. "There, they're gone. How do you feel now!"

  "Just the way I did a moment ago," said Aargh. "How should I feel?"

  "The pain you felt must have been rough," said Jim. 'Those spearpoints were made with magic, you see—"

  "I knew that. They smelled of magic. But magic doesn't work with us who go on four legs any more than your sickness does—you know that, and it's as true for things made with magick as it is of the magick itself. You've got a clear road to Wells, now. I don't think those Naturals—that's what they are, after all, aren't they?" Jim nodded. "—will try that again. I must have killed a couple of dozen, myself. They're what I was scenting. I'll be around on your way back. Just howl!"

  —And he was gone again.

  They rode into Wells just as the eastern sky first started to brighten with the morning.

  "You'll be in need of rest now," the Bishop said as they turned their horses over to the lay brothers at the stables. "I need not tell you how deep are my thanks to you for mending our devil-wounds so that we made it safely here. You will be ready for food and rest, now—"

  "Food when I wake," said Jim. "For now, no more than four hours of rest before I take my men-at-arms back to Malencontri. We've got to be back there before the daylight's gone."

  "I will see you are wakened at the hour of Prime."

  Chapter Seven

  They were in the saddle and out of Wells—Jim and his four Malencontri men-at-arms—by barely three-quarters of an hour past the time when Jim had been awakened by a lay brother with a bowl of hot vegetable soup. It had not been coffee—not even tea—but Jim had drunk it gratefully, and felt twice the man he had been when first roused out of a dead slumber with the hot bowl steaming under his nose in the chill small stony room where he had slept.

  Now, with the fresh, even greater chill of the morning air laving his face as he and his men settled down from the initial gallop of their departure to a trot that would leave some chance of their horses making it home alive, he began to feel alive himself. His mind ran ahead of the beats of
his horse's hooves, counting up all the things to be done once he was home.

  There were all the preparations against the plague to be taken care of, the castle staff to be convinced that getting rid of fleas meant getting all of the fleas and other vermin destroyed and swept out—the hunt for enough pennyroyal to scatter in at least the main rooms of the castle—strict new rules of hygiene to be taught—and finding staff who had the courage to man the Nursing Room to be set up for any who actually came down with the sickness…

  And how to create some kind of device to circulate a good quantity of fresh air through the Nursing Room to minimize more infection from the pneumonal form of the plague? This he had not mentioned to the Bishop because explanation of that form of the illness could not be convincingly explained in fourteenth-century words to a fourteenth-century mind…

  Briefly, questions about their attackers of the night before came thronging into his mind. Resolutely, he pushed them out.

  He forced his mind back to immediate necessities. He reminded himself that Carolinus was probably already at Malencontri. Brian and his guest certainly would be. Probably as well, Geronde, and Dafydd and his wife Danielle with their children, for the wedding of Brian and Geronde was to take place at the first possible time now. Then, all the preparations for that day: food, other guests…

  And, to top off the list of unsolved problems, there was still the Prince's request to somehow be diplomatically turned down—Jim could take advantage of Carolinus' presence to ask the elder man about a magickianly excuse…

  But most of these things could not be dealt with until he got home. Only the air-circulating device and the selection of people as nurses might be thought out to some extent as he rode.

  He concentrated on those two accordingly for a while. Somewhere in the servants' area on the ground floor of the castle would definitely have to be the place for the Nursing Room. They could knock out part of an outside wall in some room or space there, large enough to make a good-sized window, which could be glazed with some of the precious spare glass stored against breakage of the Solar windows. The Nursing Room window would have to be able to open so it could let fresh air in… then a fireplace added, if there wasn't already one there, to compensate for the coldness of the incoming air… storage space for extra bedding, other sickroom necessities…

  But his mind would not stay on that subject. It kept wandering off to other matters, like the attractive idea of changing into his dragon body and flying back to Malencontri in less time than it would take him to ride there, leaving his men-at-arms to follow on horseback.

  But he dared not take that chance. Malencontri was short of fighting men as things were at the moment anyway. He could not afford to lose the four men he had with him. If he had noticed the use of magic by the little, spear-carrying demons, they had undoubtedly become aware of his ability to use it as well, the minute he got rid of the spear stuck in him.

  Flying would only save a few hours, anyway. Besides, as had already occurred to him, Angie would already have begun getting the castle ready against the plague—

  But wait a minute. She would also have to be playing the role of hostess to the Prince and Joan of Kent-Salisbury, neither of which were likely to appreciate being abandoned for castle preparations against a sickness thought still to be as far away as London.

  The Prince should not be too much of a problem, come to think of it. He liked the company of women, but he also liked the companionship of men—particularly fighting men. Brian was certainly that, and the odds were his royal guest would be occupied with Brian. That only left Countess Joan—and possibly Danielle—if she and Dafydd ap Hywel had arrived yet—to say nothing of Geronde, due from Malvern any day now, since the fire in Malvern's castle had forced the wedding celebrations to be held at Malencontri.

  Hopefully, if the men were likely to gang up and go off together, the women might do exactly the same thing. If so, they might be gathered in the Solar right now…

  And—as he discovered when he finally got home—as a matter of fact, they were. The other ladies were just where he had guessed they might be, Jim was informed by three servants. And m'lady had asked that they not be disturbed there unless really necessary. What were they talking about, Jim wondered? He shrugged. Clothes, probably. That was something all women seemed to have as a topic in common.

  In actual fact, however, there were other topics for them, for they were sitting around wine and a few small cakes as if there was no such thing as plague. Present, of course, was Angie with Joan of Kent and Geronde, who had just joined them—here ahead of schedule. Danielle alone was elsewhere in the castle, occupied with her youngest boy who was fretful with a runny nose and hot forehead he had developed on the trip here.

  Geronde was not in the best of humors. She had bypassed Malencontri on her trip from Malvern, going to meet Brian at Smythe Castle so as to come here with him on the weekend—only to find him gone. She had planned to carry out a personal examination of that estate and castle over the course of the next few days, a thing her long experience in managing such estates would enable her to do with a ruthlessness that would no doubt terrify Brian's aging retainers, long used to their comfortable, long-established ways of managing a bachelor household.

  But nonetheless, the Lady Chatelaine of Malvern was, above all things, polite.

  "—a great honor to know you, my lady," Geronde had consequently just finished telling Joan now. "My husband-to-be had much to say about you."

  Unfortunately, a little of her present feelings had crept into the tone of her voice: Brian was not yet her husband and would not be until the end of the week, when the wedding would have to take place here at Malencontri, because of the unfortunate fire in her own chapel… But the hearing of Joan was as acute as that of any healthy young woman her age.

  "The honor is mine, indeed, m'lady," Joan answered, smiling. As with most Plantagenets—like the Prince himself—she was tall, fair-haired, fair-skinned, with an oval face that would have looked almost childish if there had not been a strength of mature bone under the skin. She had made a remarkably believable squire riding up to Malencontri in armor. She made an undeniably beautiful woman in her deep blue dress, now, and when she smiled, as she was presently doing, it was not difficult for Geronde to smile back.

  "—I have talked to your husband only briefly," Joan was saying now to Geronde, "but never have I heard one of our sex so praised by her husband. He could speak of nothing else. I see his praise was justified."

  The cruel knife scar on Geronde's right cheek, made by Sir Hugh de Bois when he had conquered Malvern by trickery and unsuccessfully tried to force her to marry him, flushed red. She had just been through a hard week, beginning with that fire in her chapel. Also, she was as quick as Brian to flare up. But equally as quick to flare down, now she was embarrassed. She had as good as challenged Joan with her opening tone and statement. Joan not only seemed to be refusing to take any offense, but to be unusually kind.

  As the daughter of a knight bachelor (a knight entitled only to carry a swallow-tailed pennon)—albeit one with a prosperous estate—she was not, strictly speaking, a "lady," except to her castle and estate people. Angie, the wife of a Baron—the least of the titled ranks—was just barely entitled to be addressed so. Joan, particularly considering their difference in rank, would have been perfectly correct in addressing Geronde simply as "Mistress." That she had not spoke of a genuine desire to be friendly and an intention to put all rank aside and make their present moment merely a gathering of women together.

  "You are kind indeed in all you say, my lady," said Geronde.

  "Courtoise aside," said Angie, stepping into the sticky breach, speaking to Joan, "is it possible you and Prince Edward can stay for the wedding, m'lady?"

  "M'lady," instead of the carefully pronounced "my lady," was a further presumption in the direction indicated by Joan—this time committed by Angie. Formal barriers were falling fast.

  "I doubt it," said Joan. "Edw
ard only came here to speak Sir James. I know he expected us to be on our way back to Tiverton Castle this day with Sir James's answer. Unfortunately, there was this small discussion with the good Bishop of Bath and Wells."

  "I had not heard of this," said Geronde, who had indeed heard of it, but only in sketchy detail from those of Malencontri's servants she had talked to since getting here. Brian had been absent with the Prince since her arrival. She could hardly ask Jim, for all their close friendship, even if he were here. Aside from the impropriety of such questioning, Jim was one of the few people she held in a certain sense of awe—though she would never have let him know it.

  But now there was no need to question anyone else. The two other women filled her in on it, except for the Prince's earlier question for Jim, which Joan kept to herself. By the time they had finished, they were down to first names, at least part of the time. This would have been unthinkable with any other Countess in the land, but Joan had made her own rules from the time she was grown enough to run around on two chubby legs. Commoner or King, it made no difference to her as long as she got the end she was after.

  Also, she was able to charm people, both men and women, and Angie and Geronde, though recognizing this, still fell under her spell to some extent.

  "—I know he expected no problem," she was saying now (they were back to discussing the Prince). "But any direct attack will always find him more than ready. He has the Plantagenet courage—and, of course, its rashness, as with this demand by Cumberland that he go into exile. I know how his mind works. He planned to gain a military reputation on the continent and with it make an alliance to reenter England with great force and demand, as a price for peace, Cumberland's dismissal, if not his head. It was too large a scheme to commit to on the spur of the moment."

  "And he listened?" asked Geronde, thinking not only of Brian but of her fortune-hunting father. "He must love you dearly to let himself be so schooled."

  "Oh, he is level-headed enough to see sense once his temper is cooled. As for his love for me—" Joan shrugged "—I would like to think it is as strong as you say. I hope it is—for certainly he needs guidance at times—and we grew up at court together and there as children pledged our love for the first time."