The Dragon on The Border

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Oh, well," said Jim. He gave a broad wave of his hand, and left the answer more or less hanging in mid-air. To his great satisfaction, Liseth did not pursue it.

  "Oh," she said, "Greywings is back, just as I said. I've talked to her; and yes, she found the laidly Worm again."

  "Pardon me for asking," said Jim, "but what kind of Worm is a laidly Worm?"

  "Oh," Liseth laughed, " 'laidly' is one of the Scottish words we use, too. It just means very ugly—something horrible to see. You understand?"

  "Ah," said Jim, nodding, "go on, then. You were going to tell me that he found this Worm again?"

  "She found him," corrected Liseth. "Yes, the Worm was sunning itself on the rock of a small cliff. Up somewhere probably in the Cheviot Woods."

  "Somewhere up there, you say?" Jim asked. "Doesn't your Greywings know where she saw the Worm?"

  "Oh, of course she does," answered Liseth, "but she doesn't think of places on the ground the way we do. I got out of her that it's only a short distance by wing from the castle here but that could mean anything from five to fifty miles, depending on how she flew there. In fact, it's more likely to be closer to fifty, if the Worm was actually deep in the Cheviot Woods, in Hollow Men territory."

  "I wish we could find out exactly where," said Jim thoughtfully.

  "I'll ask Snorrl the next time I see him," said Liseth. Snorrl had parted company from them before they had actually come in sight of the castle. It appeared he had no more love for buildings and their indoors than Aargh had displayed—Aargh being Jim's wolf friend down in his own home territory around le Bois de Malencontri.

  "When will you see him next?" Jim asked.

  "Oh, tomorrow, or in about a week—you can never tell with Snorrl, or with most of the animals or birds," said Liseth softly. "They aren't used to thinking of time and distance as we do."

  "How about size?" said Jim. "How big was this Worm?"

  "That was hard to find out from Greywings, too," said Liseth. "She started out by telling me that it was bigger than a hare. I knew it had to be a lot bigger than that, so I asked her if it was as big as a cow. She thought it over and said bigger. Finally I got her to say that it was at least as big as a wagon. I couldn't think of anything else for her to compare it to that would be any larger than a wagon."

  "Did it have eyes on stalks?" Jim asked.

  "Why, yes! How did you know?" answered Liseth. "She did say that. Like a great snail, though otherwise like a large garden slug."

  "It sounds uncomfortably like the Worm Brian fought at the Loathly Tower," Jim told her.

  By this time they were at the foot of the stairs and entering the hall. They found Herrac with his sons and Lachlan MacGreggor and Dafydd at their usual high table. Jim and Liseth came up and, on Herrac's invitation, which was offered while they were still several paces away, they sat down on the bench of the side opposite Herrac himself.

  "How is Sir Brian, then, m'Lord?" asked Herrac, pouring a cup full of wine in front of Jim. Liseth, he noticed, Herrac left to help herself—which she did.

  "With luck, he'll be all right," said Jim. "As you know, it was mainly loss of blood. The wound's shallow but long, on his left ribs; and I've done for it what I can. Now, if he's taken care of, given plenty of liquids and if he'll just take as much as possible of a kind of soup I've suggested to Liseth be made for him, I think we should have him up and active before the end of the week. Even if he won't, by then, be up to doing much more than getting around by himself and joining us at meals and such, here in the castle."

  "Oh!" said Liseth. "The matter had slipped my mind, m'Lord. I'll go get that soup started and be right back. With your permission. Father?"

  "By all means. Go ahead! Go ahead!" said Herrac, waving her off toward the kitchen. She rose from the bench and disappeared.

  "It's a shame he can't be with us at this moment," said Herrac, "when we have a serious situation to discuss."

  Jim was aware for the first time of the soberness of the faces around the table. He took a large swallow of his wine, and then another, finally draining the cup. The rough, red wine tasted unusually good, and felt good inside him, once he had it down. He realized then that he probably had not only been thirsty, but under considerable tension working on Brian. He did not object as Herrac filled the cup again. Also, his mind was really not on the wine. He was busy trying to tie in this sudden visitor from Scotland with laidly Worms, Hollow Men, and the second-front possibility Herrac had mentioned and Carolinus had seemed to dismiss so airily.

  Mages could be wrong.

  Chapter Ten

  "I'll say aye to that," said Lachlan, filling his own glass moodily and then drinking from it. "Seeing as it's England that's to be invaded, and he's the only Englishman among us."

  "Except for m'Lord de Bois de Malencontri," said Herrac. "He's English, also."

  It almost came to the tip of Jim's tongue to assert that he was not English but American—or would have been under ordinary circumstances. But the problem of explaining what he would mean by that stopped him in time.

  "Still," put in Dafydd, "there is something different about the fact that a Scotsman, a Welshman and a Northumbrian, even with one Englishman, should sit in council upon such a matter as this."

  "Let us have done with oddities!" said Herrac sternly. "For that matter, Northumbria is become Northumberland; and nowadays we, also, are considered English. Moreover the matter concerns not merely Northumberland and England, but Scotland and Wales as well. If we are to be overrun by Frenchmen, we will soon discover we have exchanged King Log for King Stork. Have you not stopped to think that every Frenchman with the right to wear a sword will be looking for land of his own to make into an estate at the expense of whoever the former owner might be? That will include Wales—it most certainly will include England—and it may well threaten Scotland as well, once they are in power below the Border."

  "Aye to that, too," grumbled Lachlan. "The gold that the French send is pretty enough; but no King spends gold for nothing but friendship; or an agreement so honored in the breach as the Auld Alliance, between his country and Scotland."

  He looked directly into Jim's eyes.

  "In a word. Sir James—which I will so call you, for the words come more kindly to my lips than those of 'm'Lord'—we are talking about an invasion of England from Scotland, backed with French gold, but made with Scottish lives and Scottish blood, that needs must be spilt before England can hope to be conquered—not that any hope of that there is."

  "You're concerned about Scottish lives, then?" asked Jim. "How does it come a Scotsman like yourself would be here now, warning what may well be the enemy, of a planned attack by your own people?"

  "Because Herrac has the right of it. We can all become prey to the French," said Lachlan. "Also I'm no friend of the MacDougall, who is the main force in inciting Scotland into this bloodbath with England. Not that I would mind a conquest of England that will work. But this one cannot and will not."

  "And why won't it work?" asked Jim, suddenly keenly interested.

  "Because the damned French won't show up when they're supposed to!" half shouted Lachlan, thumping the table with his fist. "They never have before, and they won't now! It's the men of the clans, France wants to pull its chestnuts out of the fire for it. Let Scotsmen conquer England; and then France will sail up, smiling; and let off its ships enough fresh armed men to slay and rout those very Scotsmen that have gained the land for them. How else can they gain by this?"

  "You have yet to tell us, look you," said Dafydd, "what makes you so sure that they will do just this thing you say."

  "Because the French have been always such!" said Lachlan. "They seek to buy Scotsmen to conquer England for them. It has always been their way; and it cannot be other than their way now. How would matters stand if Scots and French were faced with dividing England between them, somewhere down in the midlands? If ye wouldna have had a war between them for other reasons before that, ye'd have war between them
then! Can ye think that anything else would happen?"

  It was curious, thought Jim, how Lachlan's accent seemed to come and go. At moments he talked like the rest of them. At other moments he was hardly understandable.

  "Knowing the English and French—I, for one, think not," said Herrac. "M'Lord James and Master bowman—and Sir Brian if he were here—I would say to you now that I am of the mind of Lachlan on this. Our Border has taught us that there will never be peace of any real sort between Scots and Englishmen. No more is there any Scot, or Englishman of the Border, who will willingly give up what he owns to a Frenchman. There is no doubt that what Lachlan brings us is the truth. What we are here to discuss is not whether it will or will not be, but how it will be; and how we may possibly blunt the spearpoint of its first movement southward."

  "Do we know where the spearpoint is going to come from?" asked Jim. "And also what it'll consist of? If it's a full size army—"

  "Would it were," said Herrac, with a sigh. "I fear me it is something much worse."

  "Why? What's that?" asked Jim, surprised to see this powerful Border warrior, obviously one who had had a good deal of experience in the battles of his area, sound so defeated before any kind of conflict had begun.

  "Why?" echoed Herrac. "Because it's not to be an army. It's to be our old enemy, whom you've met already. These who wounded Sir Brian, who lies upstairs."

  "Who? Do you mean—?" said Jim, wanting to hear the name actually pronounced.

  "The Hollow Men," said Herrac.

  Bingo!

  Right on the button, thought Jim—and the Dark Powers pulling strings on all of them.

  "So!" he said aloud. "But I still don't see any great problem with it. At a guess how many Hollow Men are there—not more than a couple of thousand, say?"

  "Probably not," said Herrac. "No one knows, of course. None living."

  "Well, there you are," said Jim, feeling the effect of the wine making him a little more talkative than he would generally have been. "Any invasion force from Scotland that intended to make a serious attempt at England would need at least thirty thousand men, wouldn't it? Thirty thousand men on up. Maybe forty—fifty thousand. Maybe even more—"

  "How many men does it matter there are in the army of Scotsmen?" Lachlan interrupted roughly. "Whatever their number, England has that many fighting men and more. What matters is the advance force. The Hollow Men. What's to be done about even two thousand, if they canna be finally killed?"

  "Well, they can be killed—" Jim was beginning.

  "But temporarily only!" said Lachlan. "If they can come back to life in forty-eight hours, in forty-eight hours they can be back, killing mortal men who won't rise again! How do you think they've kept their land in the Cheviot Hills this long, and none been able to take it from them?"

  "But—" began Jim argumentatively; and then suddenly realized he had nothing to argue with. What Lachlan had pointed out was at the very least an unmistakable problem. Still, he did not see how the fact of the Hollow Men, heading things up, guaranteed a bloody penetration deep into the land of England; without promising the highly unlikely, which would be an overwhelming Scottish victory. The Hollow Men were too few to guarantee a Scottish victory.

  "De'il take ye, man!" said Lachlan. "Think! They canna lose—the Hollow Men cannot lose, I mean. As long as they leave one of their own back up in the Cheviot Hills—or better still, for safety, a small number of their own, then those that go can be killed as many times over as they want, and still return to enjoy what loot they may have picked up, plus whatever French money has been paid them!"

  "But what good does loot and gold do them? Since they're dead and have no bodies?" asked Jim.

  "They may be dead," said Lachlan, "but when they are alive they are as much in their bodies as you or I, and have the same appetites for food, drink, and women. This is the loathly part of them."

  "Well, of course," agreed Jim. "Still…"

  "While the Scots army will not win. Canna win! Sooner or later, a greater English force, with the help of such bowmen as our Welsh friend here—the same which has been the downfall of Scottish armies before this, for we have no strong archers of out own to match them—will surround and overwhelm the Scots."

  He glared for a second at Dafydd, who did not change expression at all.

  "All who do not escape will die. Most of the Hollow Men will die then, too; but a few may escape—particularly those carrying valuable loot, who will have left before the final battle. England will be able to throw all her strength at our Scottish forces, for I tell ye again—the French will not come!"

  He paused and stared at them all for a second.

  "The French will never land in time to help us. We will face England alone; and it is a country larger than ours, with more people, richer and stronger. Defend ourselves against it, we can; when they come to us, in our own mountains, and across our own lochs and rivers; but we canna go out against them and hope to win. I know this. Every good Scotsman knows it."

  He gulped at his cup, then took a deep breath and went on more calmly.

  "But the MacDougall will have it that the French will land. The English will panic and split their forces; and so we shall have easy victory before the French are much more than landed. After which we will be in a position to tell the French to go back from where they came. Which, according to him, they will be glad to do, since they merely came for the sake of the Auld Alliance, to give us aid!"

  The last sentence ended on a sneer.

  "What makes you so sure that the Hollow Men will be so successful leading the drive into England?" Jim asked. "True they're only dead for forty-eight hours once they're killed, but they can be killed; and surely, very soon enough. Englishmen will have them out of action to make them of little use to the Scottish host."

  "Ye think so?" Lachlan refilled his glass, looking at Jim. "When the three of you met some for the first time outside the castle here, as Herrac has told me happened to you on your incoming, what was your first feeling when you saw them coming at you? Was it to fight—or to flee?"

  Jim was caught in a cleft stick. Brian, and very probably even Dafydd with him may well have felt like running rather than fighting, when they first caught sight of the suits of armor on invisible horses galloping at them. He himself had been more intrigued than frightened. But once more to explain why something was so, he would have to venture into that quagmire he had avoided earlier. Explaining further how he did not really belong in this world; and how, on the much more advanced world he came from, people did not automatically think of magic and ghosts on seeing something they did not at first understand.

  "The first reaction at first sight, is, of course, to run from such sights," he said. "Armor, clothing and weapons operating by themselves does seem to signal something not natural—"

  "Ye admit it then!" said Lachlan. "Though you might have said so in shorter words. How do you think, then, the English are going to act, when they first see them, never having even heard of such before?"

  "Neither had we," put in Dafydd, a little dryly. "And we went forward. Of course, not all may be as m'Lord, Sir Brian and I in this."

  "But that's my point, man!" said Lachlan, swinging his gaze on him. "The Hollow Men will go far, because most will run from them at first sight. If they have enough of their invisible steeds, which are doubtless ghosts like themselves, it is not hard for a man on horseback to run down and kill men fleeing afoot before them. Not merely will the ordinary sort do this, an attack by the Hollow Men in full armor and on ghost-horses will be enough to throw into disorder any force that stands to oppose the Scots… at least at first."

  He had to pause to catch his breath. He had almost been shouting.

  "So, for some distance," he continued, "the Scots force will gain the advantage of any clash, and be able to get deep into England. Meanwhile rumor will have run before them, magnifying the Hollow Men, and making Englishmen even more fearful of them. In the end, true, there will be those w
ho will close with them and discover they can be killed, at least temporarily. But by that time our Scotsmen will be so deep into England that they may be surrounded and cut off from returning. And as I say, the English can muster much larger forces—nor will they be slow at discovering that their archers, again like our friend here, are just the weapon needed to kill Hollow Men from a distance, in safety for themselves."

  He stopped speaking. In the silence, Herrac spoke out.

  "I hope you're convinced, gentlemen," he said, looking at Jim and Dafydd. "Whatever the outcome, it can't be good for the Scots, and the ground over which they pass as they go; for they will certainly loot, and bring fire and sword to anything on which these will act. The only way of avoiding the whole thing, including the promised landing of the French, would be to stop the Hollow Men ahead of time. And this, I confess, I've no thought how to do."

  "You could round the Hollow Men up and kill them first," said Dafydd. "Was it not said, if my memory serves, that if all were killed at the same time, none could come back to life? The problem then, is merely to get them all together and surround them with a force from the Border—and I venture to promise that the Little Men would also help—and make sure that all are slain at one time."

  Lachlan gave a short, derisive laugh.

  "Lachlan," said Herrac to him, "your manners were never of the best, and they are not of the sort we would welcome now. Our two friends here at the table are doing their best to help us puzzle out this situation. Let us listen. They may not know an answer, but something they say may suggest one to us."

  To Jim's surprise Lachlan's face suddenly lost the sullen expression it had worn almost since they appeared. He sat up straight, looked directly at Dafydd and Jim, and spoke to them.

  "Forgive me," he said, without a trace of his accent. "It is true, as Herrac has said. I can be an ill-mannered kerle; and it comes to me that I have been so, just now. Will you forgive me, gentlemen?"

  Jim and Dafydd both murmured quick agreement; Jim, meanwhile, puzzling over the word "kerle." He finally identified it as the Scottish form of the medieval English "carle"—a "rude, bad-tempered lout."