Silverlock (Prologue Books)

by John Myers Myers

  “I’ll flip you,” I said, unwilling to make a choice in such a business. “Heads, I climb; tails, you do.”

  Tails came up, and as I had foreseen, I immediately felt as though he had the best of the bargain. Glumly I watched while he ascended. This in itself was not difficult. A low crotch and a series of small branches explained how it had been possible for the old woman to reach the big limb from which she was suspended. More quickly than I wanted him to, Golias was straddling it directly above her. Then he drew the knife I remembered.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” I stretched my arms up along side of her, though I wasn’t going to grab hold of her until it was absolutely necessary.

  Probably I looked as disturbed as I felt, for Golias was grinning at me. “There are women you’re luckier to have in your arms dead than alive, and this is one of them.” Placing his knife between his teeth, he shifted position, let go with his hands, and swung by his knees. Getting a grip on the woman’s hair, so she wouldn’t fall sideways, he started sawing at the harness strap which had choked her.

  It was a good thing he did have a steadying hold on her. I couldn’t reach high enough to get her above the center of balance. She was even heavier than I had thought, and I nearly dropped her when the strap snapped and Golias let go. For a horrible moment, staggering to keep my footing, I wrestled with that dead crone, my face pressed into her greasy, rank garments.

  Before I could get the situation under control, a stranger’s voice cried: “Unhand that damsel, recreant! And don’t think to escape the consequences of your vicious lust even when you do. Unhand her, I say!”

  I was in no mood for jokes, as I meant to point out to this new kibitzer. Whoever it was, his voice came from the direction of the road, but I was too busy to look at him. Disengaging my face from the hag’s blouse, I began to lower her to the ground.

  “What, a rape before my very eyes, you lascivious scoundrel!” If the fellow wasn’t really angry, he was a good actor. “Never fear, princess, help is at hand. I will blast this rascal as Mudarra blasted Velasquez. Now, minion, make what pitiful attempt to guard yourself that you can.”

  Intent on getting what I had to do over with, I still ignored him. Gritting my teeth, I composed the corpse’s arms and legs as decently as I could.

  “Shandon! Watch out!” Jones shouted.

  Before he spoke I had heard a scuffling noise. Glancing up, I saw a startling sight. Rapt in my task, I either hadn’t heard the horse coming around the bend or the sound hadn’t made any impression on me. But there was a horse there, all right, and a donkey, too. Both had riders, but the man on the horse held my eyes, because he was spurring in my direction. There were peculiar things about this fellow, but I concentrated on the fact that he had a long, pointed stick in his hand. As the horse picked up speed, he swung this weapon so that it was aimed right at me.

  Dropping the hag’s right arm, I took off from a squatting position in a dive designed to take me out of my assailant’s path. It was only mostly successful. I avoided being speared, but I didn’t entirely clear the horse. One of his hoofs caught me in the fanny while I was in midair. The effect, not counting a bruise, was to spin me around so that I landed sitting down, in a position to watch the further activities of my attacker. They were not without interest.

  In the first place, I had been right about his intentions. He had meant to stick me like a park attendant collecting trash. In my absence the point of the pole struck the ground and stayed fixed. The horse, the rider, and the rest of the weapon the latter was holding continued to move. The thing didn’t give, and the rider would not or could not let go. I had never seen a man pole vault from horseback before, but he made it. With a rattle and a clank he swung from out of the saddle and hit the identical limb from which Golias had just lowered the old woman. He had lost interest in his stick by then. It fell, but he just managed not to. It was a tough scramble, but he held on and perched there, fifteen feet above the ground.

  As Golias had descended, he had the branch all to himself; but he needed no foil to make him an arresting figure. He was dressed in rusty boiler plate. The parts didn’t match, all looking either too big or too small for him. His helmet, which was of bronze instead of iron, sat on top of his head, giving his face no protection. I could therefore see that this fellow who had tried so hard to kill me was a cadaverous old man. For an extra touch he was straddling the branch at the spot where the hag had jumped off. Her suicide strap, dangling between his legs, looked like a tail as stringy as his whiskers.

  “Enchantment,” he muttered. “Overcome by enchantment.”

  His grief wasn’t mine. That bruise hurt, and I had been shaken up. My nerves had received even worse treatment. Furiously I rose and stooped for his pole.

  “Come on down and let’s talk this over,” I snarled.

  With intent to prod him toward the trunk, I was raising the point of the stick toward him when something hit me in the knees. They buckled, but the impact wasn’t enough to sink me. Looking down, I saw that my new assailant was a fat, little man, the one who had been riding the donkey. He clung to my legs until I poked him with the blunt end of the pole, then he rose and started for me once more. Again using the pole, I held him off without difficulty, seeing that he kept his eyes tightly shut. For a full two minutes he aimed blind haymakers at me. During that period, though he was naturally heating himself up, I was cooling down. I was almost ready to smile when he found he had run out of juice and simply leaned against the pole.

  “Are you through,” I asked, “or are you just resting between rounds?”

  I could see he had been expecting a counterattack. When nothing happened to him, he opened one eye.

  “Do you give up?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m afraid I’m still in the ring.”

  With a magnificent shrug he turned his back on me. “Master,” he reported to the man in the tree, “he says he won’t surrender.”

  The old fellow didn’t answer, as his attention was elsewhere. I hadn’t had time to find out what Golias and Jones were doing while I was having my troubles. Now I saw that the former had climbed back up the tree, while the latter had caught the horse — a skinny nag — and was leading it back. My foeman was looking from one to the other to see what they were up to.

  It was Golias who gave the first clue as to what they had in mind. “Bring the charger right below us, Lucius,” he called. Then he addressed the iron-plated scarecrow. “Most worthy paladin, I have come to help you descend from a place and position so unfitting to one of your high birth, noble accomplishments, and dignified bearing.”

  Like myself, my enemy was in a less hostile frame of mind. “You speak graciously, and I will meet your courtesy with suitable frankness. I would most gladly leave this uncomfortable perch if the redoubtable enchanter,” here he waved a rusty glove at me, “will release me from his spell.”

  “We,” Golias astonished me by saying, “are servants of the mighty wizard, and he has sent us, out of his magnanimity, to aid you. No, a little more to the right, Lucius. Just there.” He had by then reached the old boy and took him by the arm. “Do you think if I lower you, you can stand in the saddle and alight safely?”

  “Naturally,” the fellow said. “It goes without saying that the most renowned knight errant of this or any age is exquisitely versed in equitation.”

  “I expect no less,” Golias assured him, “but remember your saddle’s been worn pretty smooth. All right now, swing your right leg over the branch. I’ve got you.”

  “Standing in the saddle,” the other said as he complied, “is merely a matter of practice, amplifying, you will understand, a native aptitude. Observe how I do it.”

  We observed. While he had been talking, Golias had succeeded in lowering him, metal casing and all, from the perch which they shared. The old geezer had hardly ceased speaking when his feet touched the saddle. As this was as far as Golias could reach while still maintaining a firm p
osition, he let go.

  He might as well have shoved him, or whipped the horse. The man’s feet had barely established contact with the saddle when they were on their way again. Fortunately they were both pointed in the same direction. With a sound like an iron testicle smashing scrap steel he sat down, bounced upward and forward, and would have hit the ground with another awful clank if Lucius hadn’t been there to break his fall.

  I was still wincing at thought of his crash landing when he straightened himself with a series of creaking jerks and smiled. “That’s the way it’s done, gentlemen. The feather touch to the saddle, a deft vault into the arms of one’s equerry, and here we are.”

  13

  Shenanigans to Upton

  WHILE HIS COMPANION had been engaged in the described maneuvers, the little, fat chap had sidled up to inspect the dead hag. “Master,” he announced, “she looks powerfully like just a dead old bitch to me.”

  “Of course, she’s dead,” I declared. “We found her hanging from that tree.”

  “Women aren’t found on trees,” the old codger corrected me. “They are engendered and born exactly like other people.

  “It’s a clear case of enchantment all around,” he went on before I could think of anything to say. “Only the most diabolical of magicians could give that beautiful damsel, whose name, if I mistake not, is Princess Erminia of Colchis, such an odious appearance. It is wonderful, too, how the trance she is in apes death. A man less experienced in such matters than I would be completely fooled.”

  He glanced at Jones, who, polite as usual, was trying to look respectfully interested, then at Golias, who did, in fact, seem absorbed. “To close more loop holes for doubt, I refer once more to the statement she was plucked from a tree. My first hasty conclusion was to doubt this, but I can now see that I was wrong. The fact that she was dangling from a bough is of a piece with the rest of the evil spell of which she is the victim. Lastly, it is obvious that I, the supreme paladin of paladins, could never have been overcome — as I am forced to confess that I was — except through means of the most potent incantations.” With this statement he turned to his chubby partner. “Is it all clear to you now, my son?”

  The other scratched his head. “Your being on that branch is the clincher for me. Nobody couldn’t have put you up there, loaded down with junk the way you are, without he knew a barrel full of magic.”

  “Let me,” Golias put in, “present to you the mighty magician, Shandon Silverlock, whose wiles have rendered powerless your else all-conquering arms. Shandon, this is the noble, puissant, and chivalrous Don Quixote de la Mancha, conqueror of High Utopia and Low Cockaigne, savior of Lubberland, shield of Dun Coba, protector of Saffron-Waiden, prince of paladins, squire of dames, and dean of knights errant.”

  The old fellow worked up a squeaky bow. “I yield not to your prowess, but to the overwhelming force of your magic. I trust, as you have been magnanimous enough to release me from the tree, that you will not demand my sword?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t ask him what he thought I would do with the chunk of rust he referred to, nor did I smile.

  He managed another bow. “That’s very gracious of you. Indeed, you conduct yourself so well that I grieve to have to remain your enemy.” Somehow he succeeded in folding his arms. “Well, then, what disposition will you make of me as your prisoner?”

  Instinctively I looked at Golias. All I gained was the knowledge that he was interested in finding out what I would do. What he saw in my eyes changed his, and he nodded, as if confirming an opinion.

  I think it was then that I really comprehended what had been happening to me ever since the Naglfar let me down into the waters off Aeaea. It was nothing less than a searching change in my conception of my own character. Everybody has an idea of himself which augments, aggravates, or modifies the actuality. In my own case the idea had been clear enough. I had taken not a melancholy but an unjoyous pride in thinking of myself as a cold-eyed factualist who saw no reason for acting otherwise than selfishly. Recognizing myself for such a person, I had for years worked, like other men, to contain myself in the bounds allotted by my individuality.

  Now, since reaching the Commonwealth, there had been alterations. My thinking and my emotions had got so they paid no attention to my fences. I had acquired the faculties of wonder and credulity. Most different of all, my actions tended to be sparked by what I read in other people as well as by my own undiluted impulses.

  This old gazook had tried to kill me, and I still felt the bruise I had collected in escaping him. He belonged in the nut hatch. By all the canons of reason and civic welfare, he shouldn’t be allowed to go on riding around poking poles at people who had done him no harm. If nothing else was considered, somebody ought to take that hardware away from him before he got himself killed. But it wasn’t going to be I. Crazy or not, there was something sweet about the old crackpot; and I liked the thoroughness with which he carried the thing off.

  I hesitated a while before I spoke, though. Pretense, at least for anybody’s benefit except my own, was new to me.

  “What will you do if I release you from my spell?” I finally began.

  “Attack you and rescue the beautiful princess you have so wrongfully abducted and misformed.”

  “Well, I can’t afford to let that happen. You can understand that. Let’s see — ” I was having a hard time, stumbling through unfamiliar territory. “Suppose we make a bargain; will you keep it?”

  He inclined his head. “If it’s an honorable one, on the word of a knight.”

  “So will I, on the word of a magician. Well, it’s this way, Mr. de la Mancha: way down south of here in Aphasia — ” I glanced at Golias to see how I was doing.

  “Basse or Haute Aphasia?” he enquired.

  “Oh, Basse,” I said, though not having any notion as to what he meant. “In Basse Aphasia — and not Haute, mind you — there’s a giant named Paul Bunyan. He’s so tough my magic just bounces off him, but I imagine you could lick him — conquer him, that is to say.”

  “Undoubtedly,” de la Mancha said, “always provided he’s not a wizard or a sorcerer.”

  “No, he’s nothing like that. He’s just big and strong and a hell of a fighter.”

  “The greater my glory when I defeat him,” the old boy pointed out.

  “Exactly. Now this giant has a blue ox, which can do more work than a fleet of tractors.”

  “Or ten thousand mules,” Golias suggested.

  “Yes, that’s more like it,” I agreed. “You see, he promised me that ox in exchange for helping him make the Big Rock Candy Mountains, but when pay day came around, he just laughed at me.”

  De la Mancha had been following my remarks with care. “It need hardly be said that I can win the remarkable creature for you,” he told me, when I had finished telling of my helplessness in the face of Bunyan’s perfidy, “but first let me hear your side of the bargain.”

  For answer I pointed at the hag. “I’ll guarantee to see that she will be in her own proper shape and appearance, not in the least changed from the moment I first saw her.”

  He looked at me searchingly. “Will you hand her over to her friends and kindred?”

  Not knowing what else to do to emphasize my good faith, I crossed my heart. “Before this day is over. You see, I trust you. I won’t wait until I see the blue ox. I’ll take your word for it that you’ll bring it to me.”

  I had overlooked the necessity of a trysting place, but Golias thought of it. “Suppose you have him bring it here, Shandon.”

  “I’ll do it!” the old fellow cried. He grabbed my hand in both of his iron mitts and pumped it. “It’ll take some time to get to Basse Aphasia and back, but shall we say a year and a day from now?”

  “At 3:30 P.M.,” I nodded.

  “Done! Sancho, my son,” he called to his companion, “we have, in effect, rescued the Princess Erminia of Colchis, and now we’re off on a new adventure. Mount, mount, as you love God, my lady, and m
e!”

  The little fat man didn’t share the other’s happiness. “Something was left out of that there bargain,” he declared. “The magician here gets a swell ox, and the princess gets to be alive and look pretty again, but what do we get out of it?”

  “The honor of having served such a sweet lady, toad.”

  “Well, but don’t you think she’d feel better about it if we’d let her give us a duchy or so to show her appreciation?”

  De la Mancha snorted. “It’s enough for me that she will know to whose good sword she owes her renewed happiness. Mount, I say. No, hold my steed first.”

  Even with the assistance of Jones it was quite a business getting him back up on his scrawny crow bait. When he had finally managed it, and Sancho had handed him that pole again, he made a jerky salute with his free hand before he dropped it to the reins.

  “A year and a day from today,” he smiled. Sancho scrambled up on his donkey, and they trotted down Wading Street.

  Jones had effaced himself during our discussion of terms. “A fine old gentleman,” he said when de la Mancha was out of hearing. Then he slapped me on the back. “That was well done. I wouldn’t have known how to be as nice to him as you were.”

  “You knew how to get us, or rather me, in the way of that damned pointed stick,” I reminded him. For the time being I had used up my novel stock of humanitarianism; and I remembered how I had been scared, hurt, and nearly killed, because Lucius hadn’t minded his own affairs. I took a few steps, limping more than was necessary. “I told you not to butt in here.”

  If he had intended to answer, he was stopped by the return of the little girl, accompanied by a gypsy man and woman. Ignoring us, they loaded the hag into the one-horse farm wagon in which they came, and drove off.

  Thus released from responsibility, we got moving again. Twice, however, before we rounded the next turn, I looked back at the place where we had held that impromptu wake. By then I had almost forgotten my injury and entirely forgotten my irritation with Jones. In spite of the way I had responded to his praise, I was pleased with my part in the encounter with de la Mancha. There was something else about it, in addition to the fact that I had been kind to a likeable old lunatic, that stirred my wonder at myself. For a man whose imagination had never had much practice that wasn’t a bad story I had concocted out of vague recollections of things related to me by sundry guides. I told it over to myself several times and liked it on every repetition, although there were a couple of touches I belatedly wished I had thought to insert.