The Dragon Knight

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "You'll have me dragged away, my Lord?" For the first time, a little of Jim's hard held but growing inner anger crept into his voice. "You have four men with you."

  He left unsaid the fact that he had fifty men; but the point was not lost on the Earl.

  "Go!" said that Lord.

  Jim had a stubborn streak that was seldom roused; but at this moment it was becoming very much alive within him.

  "I'll leave after it's perfectly understood that Sir Giles will be buried at sea, as he asked just now," said Jim. "I gave him my word it would be so."

  "And what is your word to me?" snarled the Earl. "Do you think to frighten me with the red on your shield, or anything else about you? Do you think to force me with a handful of men because I am alone? These matters are not decided by such as you. They are decided by such as myself and His Royal Majesty here. He will lie with the others and nothing will change that. I have said it!"

  Jim's stubborn streak was now fully in command of him.

  "Then you've wasted breath on something that won't happen, my Lord," he said. "I will go. But I leave, saying to you flatly that Sir Giles will not be buried here at this field. He will be buried where he asked to be buried—in the sea."

  The Earl's face was brick red with rage.

  "Never have I encountered such pertness!" he shouted. "By all the Hosts of Heaven, you may say that this hedge-knight friend of yours will be buried in the sea. You may even try to take his body hence. But the moment the truce is settled, which will surely be within twenty-four hours if not before, I will set such force upon your track as will hunt you down like a rabbit and will return his bones and what stinking flesh remains upon them to this place where they belong!"

  "Your Lordship will not have to wait beyond the twenty-four hours, itself," came the venomous voice of Malvinne from a little behind King Jean. "I, a Minister of France, promise it."

  "Try it, then!" snapped Jim; and turned to go, to get Giles—if he was already dead—and start taking him toward the distant sea of the English Channel across which the two of them had sailed to this land.

  "A moment—" said the voice of Carolinus.

  Jim saw that the elderly magician had appeared again, almost as if from nowhere. But it was not Jim at whom Carolinus was looking, nor Jim to whom he spoke. He spoke to the Earl instead.

  "If Your Lordship would listen to a word from me—"

  "Out on you, sorcerers all!" raved the Earl. "I will listen to no one on this subject. It is closed. You hear me! Closed. I have the authority here, and I say what will be. That is all any of you need to know."

  He turned back to the King, as if to continue their conversation. Carolinus put out a hand to catch Jim's arm.

  "Wait here," said Carolinus, looking sternly at Jim.

  Jim stayed where he was. Carolinus went off with surprisingly long strides toward the knot of people around where Sir Giles lay. He disappeared among them. Jim waited; but when nothing seemed to be happening, he turned back to the Earl and the King, who were back to discussing the Chantries that were to be built so that prayers could be said for those in the two mass graves.

  They continued to ignore him, and he had nothing to say. So he simply stood and listened with only a part of his attention. He was paying little attention because his mind was as thoroughly made up as it ever had been. He would get Giles's body to the sea no matter what happened. It was no longer a desire, it was a fact.

  There was suddenly a flash of blue cote-hardie and Jim looked about to see Prince Edward beside him. The young Prince's face was flushed.

  "What is this I hear, my Lord?" he said to the Earl of Cumberland. "My brave Sir Giles is not to be allowed the resting place of his choice?"

  With an obvious effort, the Earl of Cumberland mastered the emotions that Jim had evoked in him. He tried to speak reasonably to the Prince.

  "It is merely a matter of the necessary arrangements for the truce I am arranging between us English and King Jean," he said. "To help make the truce effective and satisfying to both French and English, we decided that two Chantries shall be built in this place and two great graves dug; one for all those French gentlemen who have fallen on this field and one for all those English gentlemen who have done likewise, it will be a great honor to be buried so; to say nothing of the fact that their souls will benefit from the prayers of those in the Chantries."

  The Prince's eyes flashed.

  "You are avoiding my question, Lord Earl! I asked whether Sir Giles is to be buried where he wished, or not?"

  "Necessarily, Highness," said the Earl, "he must lie with the other English knights who will have died here."

  "In spite of his wishes?"

  "I regret, Highness," said the Earl solemnly, "but yes."

  "In spite of my wishes?"

  The Earl was obviously nothing if not a brave man. But he risked one quick glance at King Jean at this point. However, the King of France was observing the field, and pointedly staying out of the discussion. Cumberland turned back to face his questioner. As he did so, the dusky color of anger began to creep once more into his face, and Jim saw that the Earl's own stubbornness was being aroused.

  "I would not in anything ordinarily go against your wishes, Highness," he said, "but—forgive me—you are still a young man, and while you know something of the world, there are elements of politics between nations, which—"

  "I said, of mine?" snapped the Prince.

  "Well, Highness," said the Earl, turning a shade darker in the face, "if you must have it! I am commander here of the English forces; and an army can have but one commander. As that commander, I must judge what is best for all, on my honor and on my responsibility to your Royal father. I regret, but Sir Giles must be buried here. It is a matter of necessity. Surely you must see that."

  "I see a hot Earl, who is determined to thwart his Prince!" The Prince's voice soared upward in volume. "You ignore the fact that Sir Giles was not one of your command, not from among your forces. He was one of another group, including this good knight beside me, sent to rescue me from a most sad capture; and well did they perform the task! He is under my command, not yours. I say he shall be buried where he wishes to be buried, in the sea and nowhere else!"

  "With infinite regrets, Highness," said the Earl stubbornly, "I cannot admit that he is not under my command. All Englishmen who fought and died here are under my command. He must lie with the others."

  Standing beside the Prince, Jim winced, but did not know what to do about the situation. It was this same matter of being on stage that he had remarked among the gentlemanly class in this world. The Earl was acting the part that he felt life had called him to act. He was acting as an Earl should. He was insisting on his authority in the face of what must surely be the lethal enmity of a member of the Royal Family next in line for the English throne.

  If the Prince lived to succeed his father, the Earl could look forward only to ruin. And possibly the Prince might even be able to ruin, if not execute him, even before he had ascended to the throne. But, being a knight and an Earl, he could not back down.

  Similarly, the Prince was feeling himself challenged. It was unthinkable that a mere Earl should stand against the Crown Prince of England in anything. Neither man was in a position now where they could back down. Jim's mind was searching desperately for some excuse to interrupt the dialogue, when the Prince solved that matter for himself.

  "Very well, proud Earl!" snapped to the Prince. "You make up my mind for me! I was right in the first place. I will to horse and out on the field to rally what English I can around me and see if we cannot win this day after all!"

  "Young cousin—" said King Jean, starting forward and holding out his hand to stop the young man.

  But the Prince had already whirled on one heel.

  "My horse!" he shouted. "And make ready to follow me out onto the field—"

  His voice broke off. Everyone behind him was staring skyward. He too turned and stared toward the sky in the west, up
over the English lines. Jim joined him.

  Coming into view rapidly, was a wide band of black specks, the closer of which resolved themselves into dragon shapes.

  It was an unnerving sight. Jim, who had a better measure of such things from his experience of being a dragon himself, checked his wild imagination after its first gasp of astonishment, and told himself that there could not be more than a couple of hundred dragons at most in the air, high up, coming toward them. But at first glance it had looked—and to every other human there it must also look—as if the sky was being filled with dragons. As if there were literally thousands of them.

  As the front line of the great bodies in flight approached above the English lines, some arrows flew into the air toward them. But the dragons were flying far too high for the arrows to do any damage. They came on, beginning to overshadow the field; and on the field itself, all combat had ceased. Opponents, who a moment before had been hacking away at each other, now sat on their horses, swords still in their hands, staring upward together at the oncoming of the dragons.

  Jim let a slow sigh of relief escape him. No one else was close enough to hear.

  "Well," he thought, almost ready to smile in his relief, "better late than never."

  The dragons came on. As they began to come over the actual field itself, they stopped their forward travel, caught thermals, and circled individually above it. There were not enough of them, to actually get in the way of the sunlight, but it seemed as if the mass of them would overshadow all the earth below.

  Out on the field, the heralds were at last being heard. Weapons were being sheathed or hung back upon the saddle from which they had originally been taken. Shields were being lowered. Below the darkness of the dragons, it seemed almost as if French and English had become one company. Now, at last they were all listening to word of the truce that was being proclaimed by the French and English heralds.

  "What brings them?" said the stricken voice of King Jean, behind him. "Why are they here?"

  Jim turned back to face the King and the Earl.

  "They are here to aid the English cause, Highness," he said harshly. "In my capacity as Dragon Knight I made that agreement with them sometime since. They are a little later in arrival than I had hoped. But they are here now."

  The King stared at him. The Earl stared at him. The Earl was the quicker of the two to recover.

  Turning back to the King, he spoke directly at him.

  "Perhaps you would care to discuss the terms of a surrender, after all. Your Highness?" he said.

  "No!" said Jim sharply.

  The Earl turned as sharply upon him. Then, suddenly realizing that the situation had changed, choked back whatever angry words had been about to come from his lips.

  "May I ask why, Sir Dragon Knight?" he said finally, in a voice that he struggled to keep level and polite.

  "Because it is in a truce that this day is destined to end," said Jim, "for the greater good and the greater glory not only of England, but of France as well. You must trust me in this, my Lord and Your Majesty. It must be so."

  Once more the Earl and the King exchanged glances, then looked back at Jim. They were wordless. And, indeed, that was not surprising. For there was now nothing left for them to say.

  Chapter Forty-One

  For the waters of the English Channel, it was a calm day; and the sailing vessel that carried Jim, Brian, Dafydd, and Aragh, as well as all their men and horses, was a much larger vessel than the one in which Jim and Brian, with Giles, had gone originally from England to France.

  Nevertheless, hove to for the ceremony of burying Sir Giles, the vessel pitched uneasily; and there were not a few of the men-at-arms and the several archers that had somehow become added to their company, whom Jim suspected of wanting to see matters over with as soon as possible, and the vessel back on its way. Not that the motion of the vessel was much better on queasy stomachs when it was sailing, but they would be that much closer to dry land again and England.

  Nonetheless, Jim, Brian, and Dafydd had no intention of cutting short the consigning of Giles's body to the ocean waters. They had been unable to ship a priest along with them for the final ceremony, so Jim recited as much of the burial service as he could remember, trusting to the lack of understanding of Latin among those about him to keep them from noticing his omissions and errors.

  The day was without rain, although the sky was heavy. The gray clouds and the gray sea seemed to enclose them as they stood by the section of open railing where the body of Sir Giles, complete in arms and armor, lay on a couple of planks that could be tipped to slide him off to his final resting place.

  Jim reached the end of the service. He turned to nod to Tom Server and the other men-at-arms who were standing by to lift the ends of the planks.

  The men lifted, Sir Giles slid down the boards and into the sea that was only a few feet away. The rest had averted their eyes at the last moment, but Jim, Brian, and Dafydd leaned over the rail, to see the last of their Companion.

  And it was well they did.

  As Sir Giles slipped into the water, a thing happened that most of those watching would have been highly alarmed to see; but which the three friends found the happiest sight they could imagine.

  As the armored figure slid into the water, a miracle seemed to happen. The armor burst outward, as once Jim's armor had burst when he had turned into a dragon on the way to Carolinus's place. But this time what emerged was a gray harbor seal, which turned one lively eye on them for a moment, before diving and being lost to sight permanently beneath the gray waters of the Channel. The three drew back from the side of the boat.

  "You knew this was to happen?" Brian asked Jim, awed.

  Jim shook his head and smiled.

  "No," he answered in a low voice that carried only to Brian and Dafydd, "but I'm not surprised."

  "Will he be a seal forever more, now?" asked Dafydd, in similar hushed tones.

  "I don't know," said Jim. "Perhaps. Still…"

  He turned away from the rail, shaking his head, and the question was left unanswered. He had been unaccountably depressed since the evening following the battle, when he had called up the Accounting Office and submitted his charges against Malvinne. Until this moment, he had not been sure that what he had done was for the best for everyone concerned. Now, the bright, brief gleam of the eye of that seal had somehow reassured him.

  "Ho, now, shipmaster!" Brian hailed the ship's master, "we are done. Away to England!"

  About a week and a half had passed, before the three of them, with their mounted men-at-arms and archers—the total number of which had somehow grown on their way back from France—strung out along the forest trail behind them, once more approached the castle of Malencontri.

  They were finally less than a mile away from Jim's home; and the weather this time was in tune with their homecoming. It was a bright, hot day in late August; and the forest shade was welcome upon those who wore armor, or even the heavy protective jackets of boiled leather which the archers, and some of the men-at-arms favored.

  Jim, Brian, and Dafydd rode abreast at the head of the line of men. Aragh had left them almost upon landing, saying he had no intention of being held up by their slow travel. Meanwhile, all difference of rank between the three had now vanished, not only worn away by what they had been through, but by the death and sea change of Sir Giles.

  Brian's grief at the death of the other knight had been more than Jim had expected; but then he was always underestimating the suddenness and the depth of emotion that could crop up in these people with whom he now lived. But finally, it seemed to have vanished entirely, exorcised partially by Giles's sea change and by another attitude Jim had come to recognize as part of this world; that things done and over with were to be accepted and forgotten.

  Now Brian's concern was all for Malencontri; and whether he might find his ladylove still visiting there. Dafydd had said nothing; but Jim suspected that the Welsh archer's thoughts were likewise conce
ntrated on the hope that his wife would also be at Malencontri when they got there. However, apparently to keep his mind off questioning the aforesaid hope, Dafydd was chatting of other things.

  "You have heard or felt—not even in a way in which only a magician might—" he was now asking Jim, "anymore of Malvinne, did you mark that apparently he disappeared at just about the time the dragons showed up? You should have told me sooner that Carolinus had warned you that after twenty-four hours Carolinus's power to protect you against that French sorcerer would be gone."

  "It didn't matter," said Jim almost absently. "By that time I'd made my charges to the Accounting Office."

  "Charges?" asked Brian.

  Jim caught himself. This was business private to the Kingdom of Magicians.

  "It's too difficult to explain," he said. "Just take my word for it Malvinne won't be able to harm anyone with magic for a long, long time, if he ever is able again."

  "You are troubled," said Dafydd, riding on the other side of him.

  Jim glanced at the archer. Above the fine straight nose, the dark brown eyes were concerned.

  "Somewhat," he admitted.

  "Troubled?" echoed Brian alertly. "About what James?"

  "He does not know, I think," said Dafydd, "but there is still a black shadow over everything. It is darkest wherever Malvinne is. I can feel it too, but I can no more understand it than he can."

  Jim chewed his lower lip for a moment, wondering whether to try to explain. He decided against it. It was too mixed up.

  "Dafydd's right," said Jim. "There's a dark shadow—and I don't understand it. Don't ask me about it, please, Brian. When I can understand it to any extent, I'll tell you about it."

  "As you wish, James," said Brian, "but in case of need—you will not forget me?"

  Jim had to smile at him.

  "In case of need, Brian," he said, "you are the last person I would forget."

  "Well then, let trouble come," said Brian. "Troubles are as common in this world as fleas. And it is as impossible to clean them all out. There is nothing to do but wait till one comes close to the fingers; and then deal with it."