by Mike Ashley
The squire named Peter was the first of that company to awake to the new day. The sun was still behind the eastward wall of the forest when he opened his eyes. Having lain out all night, he was damp with dew from head to foot. He sat up and blinked at slumbering Gervis, at four overturned flasks of rare outlandish glass on the dew-gemmed sward, and at the black and gray of the fallen fire. The events of the previous evening flashed on his mind, confusedly yet vividly, and painfully, for his brain felt tender and his eyes too big and hot for their sockets.
“Honest ale will be good enough for me from now on,” he muttered.
He made his stumbling way to a brook which skirted the glade, knelt there and immersed arms and head in the cool water. Vastly refreshed, he went back and stirred Gervis and the grooms to action; and all four, without a word but as if by spoken agreement, began rounding up the horses and examining their hooves.
“So it wasn’t a dream!” cried Gervis; and he called all the saints whose names he could remember to bear witness that the episode of the forge had been sober fact. “I never thought to have that old warlock shoe a horse for me,” he added.
“When you have served good old Torrice as long as I have, nothing will surprise you,” Peter answered with a superior air.
“A search of the smithy now might be worth our while,” suggested Gervis. “The secret of that trick would be useful, and it might even win a battle under certain circumstances.”
So the two squires left the glade by the way they had come into it less than twelve hours before, in the hope of wresting a hint at least of Merlin’s formula for horseshoeing from the deserted smithy while the magician continued to sleep off his potations in the pavilion. They had not far to go; and the back-tracking of the passage of six horses and seven men over fat moss and through lush fern was a simple matter. And there they were. There was the great oak, anyway – the identical old forest patriarch bearing scars of thunderbolts, a herons’ nest and three bushes of mistletoe, and doubtless, a hamadryad in its wide and soaring world of greenery. The squires stood and stared. They moved their lips, but no sound came forth. Gervis’ tongue was the first to thaw.
“Not here,” he whispered. “Not the same tree. This isn’t the place.”
But he knew better. This was a unique tree. And here were the two ancient thorns, that had crowded one end of the smithy, and the hollies that had crowded the other end of it. This was the place, certainly. A fool would recognize it. Everything was here, just as it had been – except the smithy.
Peter shivered and found his tongue and said: “We’ll go back and take another look at the horses’ feet.”
They returned to the glade and inspected all twenty-four hooves again. The new shoes were still in their places.
“I feared they had flown away after the smithy, forge, anvil and bellows,” muttered Gervis.
“They may yet,” said Peter grimly.
“But he seems to be a merry old gentleman and a true friend to King Torrice,” said Gervis.
“There’s more to that old warlock than meets the eye,” Peter answered. “As for his friendship – well, from all I’ve heard, I’d liefer have him with me than against me, but it would suit me best to be entirely free of his attentions. He has a queer sense of humor, and a devilish odd idea of a joke, by old wives’ tales I’ve heard here and there. Take King Arthur Pendragon’s birth, for instance: You know about that, of course! Well, was that a decent trick to play on a lady? For all his high blood – he was born a duke, no doubt of that – the mighty wizard Merlin is no gentleman. He doesn’t think like one – not like our Torrice, nor like our Lorn, nor like you who can boast an honorable knight for a father, nor even like me, stable-born and stable-bred. Aye, though my gentility be scarce a year old, I’m a better gentleman than Duke Merlin, by my halidom!”
“I agree with you, Peter – but not so loud, for here they come from the pavilion,” warned Gervis.
King Torrice, in a kingly long robe of red silk, issued from the pavilion and looked to his front and right and left with an inquiring air. Sir Lorn, in an equally fine robe, appeared and stood beside his grandfather, yawning and blinking. And that was all. The guest, the great Merlin, did not come forth. The squires ran and halted and uncapped before their knights.
“How are the horses’ feet?” asked the King.
“We have inspected them twice this morning, sir, and found all in order and every shoe in its place,” Peter replied, and after a moment’s hesitation, added: “But the smithy is gone, sir.”
King Torrice nodded. He looked thoughtful, but not surprised.
“So is the smith,” he said. “Let us hope and pray that his handiwork does not follow him.”
“Every iron is tight and true, sir,” Gervis assured him.
Peter spoke hesitantly.
“Sir, may I suggest that it might happen? His handiwork might follow him – the twenty-four iron shoes – even on the hooves of Your Honor’s horses – if all I’ve heard of that old warlock’s magic be true.”
The venerable quester blinked and asked: “How so, lad? D’ye suggest that their potency could, and might, pull the hooves off the horses? And why not, come to think of it? It smacks of the Merlin touch, by Judas!”
“Yes sir – but I did not mean it just in that way. I meant to suggest that he might, if in a tricky mood, bid the twenty-four shoes to follow him – horses and all.”
“Hah!” the King exclaimed; and he swore by half a dozen saints. “That’s his game, depend upon it! And I was simple enough to think he had done us a good turn out of pure good will! The master touch, indeed! But what does he want of us? What devilment is he up to now? ‘A horn of ale will settle my score,’ said he. And he leaves an empty cask, empty bottles and four empty flasks of Araby. But he is welcome to all that, and would be welcome to a hundred silver crowns besides if I knew that the score was settled. But forewarned is forearmed; and we’ll see to it that our horses go our way, not Wizard Merlin’s, even if we have to unshoe them and lead them afoot again.”
Breakfast was eaten; packhorses were loaded; the squires harnessed the knights and then each the other; and all four mounted into their high saddles. It was in all their minds that the march would be resumed in the same direction from which it had been diverted by the discovery of the smithy; so when all the horses wheeled to the right and plunged from the track as if by a common and irresistible impulse, King Torrice cried “Halt!” and pulled mightily on his reins. The squires pulled too, and the grooms pushed manfully against the thrusting heads of the packhorses; but Sir Lorn, up on mighty Bahram and with his thoughts elsewhere – probably in Faeryland – neither drew rein nor cried halt, but crashed onward through fern and underbrush. The pulling and pushing and protesting of the others was of no avail. Where Lorn’s great white warhorse led, the King’s old charger, the squires’ hackneys and the stubborn beasts of burden would follow.
“Sir, this is what I meant!” cried Peter, coming up on the King’s left.
“Gramercy!” gasped Torrice, who seldom forgot his manners, especially to his inferiors in rank.
Now they were beneath great oaks, with fallow deer bounding before them through netted sunshine and shadow, and tawny wild swine scattering right and left. Now charger and hackneys and ponies took their own heads for it, and ran as if possessed by devils. At the same moment Lorn drew rein and turned his head and waved a hand. The King and squires were soon up with him. He pointed through a screen of saplings.
“A good track,” he said. “A wide and beaten track.”
They all looked. There below them lay a better track than they had seen in a sennight, sure enough.
“It must go to some fine town, sir!” Gervis cried.
“I don’t like it,” said the King. “’Tis not of our own choosing.”
“’Twill lead us out of the wilderness, sir, wherever to,” Peter said: and in his eagerness to see a market and a tavern again, and houses with ladies and damosels looking down from
windows, his distrust of Merlin was almost forgotten.
“Still I don’t like it!” Torrice muttered. “Nor what brought us to it against our wills. I have gone my own way since first donning gold spurs. I’m a knight-errant, and baron and king. I acknowledge no human overlord save Arthur Pendragon – and I might defy even him at a pinch, as I have defied his father King Uther upon occasion. And now am I to jink this way and that at the whim of a tricky old magic-monger and the itch of bedeviled horseshoes? Nay, by my halidom!”
Just then the white stallion and Sir Lorn went through the saplings and down the short bank, turned left on the track and trotted purposefully; and the King’s charger and the King followed, willy-nilly; and the hackneys and the squires; and the grooms and their charges, clanking and running and eating dust.
“Hold! Hold!” King Torrice bawled, worked up by now to a fury of defiance that was foreign to his naturally placid though restless spirit – but all he got for it was a bitten tongue.
But that flurry of advance took the little cavalcade no farther than around the next curve in the track. There Lorn pulled up, and all the others at his stirrups and his tail. Then all saw that which he had seen first. It was a dwarf standing fairly in the middle of the way and louting low.
“What now, my good manikin?” asked Torrice suspiciously: and he stared searchingly at the little fellow, looking for Merlin in yet another disguise.
Clearly and briefly the dwarf revealed his business. His mistress, Dame Clara, a defenceless widow, begged their lordships’ protection from a cruel oppressor who had confined her within her manor house, beaten her stewards, driven off a full half of her flocks and herds, and was even now collecting her rents into his own pouch and demanding her hand in marriage.
“A widow,” said the King reflectively, stroking his beard and wagging his head. “A beautiful widow, I presume – and as virtuous as beautiful, of course.”
“The most beautiful lady in the land, Sir King!” cried the dwarf.
“Sir King?” queried Torrice. “Hah! So you know me, my friend! We have met before, is that it?”
“Nay, Your Kingship, but a poor old palmer home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem visited us but a few hours since, and informed my mistress of the approach of the great King Torrice of Har and his noble Irish grandson Sir Lorn, and assured her that now her troubles were ended,” replied the manikin.
Torrice looked at Lorn in consternation. He placed a shaking hand on the other’s mailed thigh.
“You hear that, dear lad? Merlin – just as I expected! But he’ll not make monkeys of us – to pluck his chestnuts out of fires. I’ll wrench off those cursed shoes with my bare hands first! We’ll turn now, and ride hard the other way.”
The young knight said, “Yes sir,” but immediately acted contrarily. Instead of wheeling Bahram, he stooped from his saddle and extended a hand downward to the dwarf, who seized it and was up behind him quick as a wink; and next moment all six horses were trotting forward again, with the great white stallion leading, but the King’s tall gray – despite the King’s protests – pressing him close.
The forest fell back on either hand, and they rode between ditches and hedges, green meadows and fields of young wheat and barley.
“Not so fast, young lord,” cautioned the messenger. “Your great horse may need all his wind in a little while.”
Lorn slowed the stallion’s pace to a walk, and the rest slowed as well.
“I fear we’ll pay dearly yet for our new shoes,” said the King.
“But this is in the true spirit of our quest, sir – to succor distressed ladies and damosels,” Lorn answered, with unusual animation in voice and eye. “How better can we discover what we are questing for, dear sir – whatever that is?”
“The soul of Beauty,” said his grandfather. “In her true and imperishable shape! But at that time I believed myself to be imperishable too. But never mind that now. You are right, dear lad – the quest is the thing; and the higher and harder it is, the more honor to the quester, win or lose. But I’d feel happier about this if Merlin hadn’t a finger in it.”
They came to the brow of a hill and looked down upon a wide and verdant vale. There was a little river with a red mill, a great water-wheel and a pond lively with fat ducks. There were cornlands and grasslands; orchards of apple, pear and plum; hopgardens which foretold brown ale, and little gardens of sage and thyme and savory foretelling well-stuffed ducks and capons and Michaelmas geese spitted and roasting to a turn; thatched roofs of farmsteads, and in the midst of all, the slated roofs, timber walls and stone tower of a great manor house. They drew rein and gazed at the fair prospect.
“What is it called?” asked King Torrice.
“Joyous Vale,” the dwarf replied in a pathetic voice. “It was named in a happier time than now. Your Kingship,” he added with a sigh.
“And where is your grievous tyrant?” asked the King.
“His pavilion is behind that screen of willows beyond the ford there; but he will show himself at the sound of a horn,” said the dwarf.
Torrice stroked his beard and said: “As we have come thus far at Merlin’s whim, we may as well see this thing through of our own will and in our own way. Peter, you have a horn. But just a moment, if you please. Lorn, the fellow is yours. If there is another, I’ll attend to him. If there are more” – he smiled kindly at each of the squires in turn – “we’ll have a proper ding-dong set-to, all for one and one for all. And now the horn, friend Peter.”
It was already at Peter’s lips; and he blew as if he would split it and his cheeks too. The echoes were still flying when a tall and wide figure in a blue robe appeared from behind the willows, stared, shook a fist and retreated from view.
“This is Sir Drecker, the false knight,” said the dwarf. “He has a comrade as knavish as himself, but not so large, called Sir Barl, and four stout fellows who are readier with knives than swords. If they are all in camp now, Sir Drecker will soon reappear in full force; but if his rogues are tax-collecting and looting cupboards around-about, Your Kingship will not have to do with him yet awhile, for he will avoid contact until he has a sure advantage.”
“D’ye say so, Master Manikin!” cried the King, snapping his eyes and bristling his whiskers. “Then you don’t know me and my grandson, nor these two gentlemen our squires, nor, for that matter, these two grooms neither! We’ll hunt him like a red pig! We’ll exterminate him and his dirty marauders like rats in a granary!”
The dwarf smiled slyly, well pleased with the old King’s temper. Sir Lorn, gazing fixedly at the willows beyond the little river, did not speak, but his nostrils quivered and his lips were parted expectantly. The horses stood with tossing heads and pricking ears.
“Here they come!” cried the dwarf.
Two knights on great black horses came slowly into view from the screen of willows. Their visors were closed and their shields dressed before them, but their spears were still at the carry, cocked straight up. They wheeled and drew rein above the ford.
“They have chosen their ground,” said the dwarf.
“And very prettily – if they think we are fools enough to go charging down and through and up at them like mad bulls,” jeered the King. “But where are the others?” he asked.
“Hiding under the bank, sir, among the osiers, depend upon it, Sir King – just in case their knives are needed,” said the little man in green.
Torrice jeered again.
“In silk and fur-lined slippers I am one of the world’s most artless fools, but in leather and iron I am quite another person,” he told them. “Just as I have acquired all the skills of knightly combat, even so have I learned all the answers to the cowardly tricks of such scoundrels as these: by the hard way. Now give me your attention.”
Five Die, but One Rides Away
Torrice and Lorn rode down to the ford at a hand-gallop, with closed visors, dressed shields and leveled spears; and the oppressors of the lady of the manor laughed derisively wit
hin their helmets, for now they would have nothing to do but push the witless intruders back into the river, men and horses together, as they scrambled, blown and off balance, to the top of the bank. But it did not happen just so. The false knights moved forward easily to the sounds of splashing and the clanging of iron on stones down there below their line of vision; but when nothing appeared at the top of the bank – no head of horse, no plume-topped casque, no wobbling spear-point – they drew rein. Now all was silent down there. And now the two squires of the intrusive knights came on at a hand-gallop, and clattered down to the ford and so from view; and silence reigned again.
Sir Drecker felt a chill of misgiving. He cursed, but uncertainly, and ordered his companion to advance until he could see what was going on under the bank. Instead of obeying, Sir Barl uttered a warning cry and pointed a hand. Drecker looked and saw a dismounted knight straightening himself at the top of the bank some ten spear-lengths to his left. Drecker laughed, for the advantage of horse and spear and shield was all his. He wheeled his great charger; but not even a good horse can be jumped to full gallop from a standing start, however deep the spurring. In this case, the spurring was too deep. The horse came on crookedly, with rebellious plunges. Sir Lorn moved suddenly in every muscle, and his sword whirled and bit the shaft of the spear clean through. Lorn dropped his sword then, and laid hold of the tyrant with both hands and dragged him from the lurching saddle. He knelt to unlatch the tyrant’s helmet.
“Mercy!” screamed Drecker; and he straightway made a prayer pitiful enough to soften a heart of stone.
Lorn stayed his hand, but the weakening of his purpose was due to disgust, not pity.
“Faugh!” he cried; and he rose from his knees and booted Drecker’s iron-clad ribs with an iron toe.
He stood straight and looked around him. He saw King Torrice come up from the ford on his venerable gray, moving slowly but with leveled lance, and ride at Sir Barl, who was ready and riding hard. Lorn’s heart misgave him for a moment, but recovered as quickly when Barl’s horse went clean out from under its master and galloped away, leaving that unhandy rogue grassed beneath a split shield and a punctured breastplate. Now he remembered the rogue Drecker, but only to see him up and running and already ten yards off. And now his white stallion Bahram topped the bank within a few paces of him, swung his great head and glowing eyes to survey the field, snorted like a dragon and went in thunderous pursuit of Sir Drecker.