The Pixilated Peeress

by L. Sprague De Camp

  "You shan't be raped at all, if I can prevent."

  "Oh, thank you, sir. Meanst it that ye have lost your member in the wars?"

  Thorolf gave a laugh that was half a gurgle because of the blood in his mouth. "Nay indeed. But this cut on my face begins to hurt abominably. Canst wash it and show me what it looks like?"

  "Oh, yea, sir. Sit ye down here, and I'll wash it and sew it up."

  She brought in a bronze mirror, which gave a wobbly image of Thorolf with a huge gash on his right cheek, through which some of his teeth could be glimpsed. Below it his face and garments were soaked with blood.

  "This will hurt," she said.

  "Go ahead," said Thorolf. "A soldier must expect such dolors. Ouch!"

  While the stitching and the pains associated with it took nearly all of Thorolf's attention, he became aware that the young woman was silently weeping. When the last bit of thread had been tied, he took his mind off the ache long enough to say:

  "Why weep you—and what is your name, by the way?"

  "Ramola, sir."

  "Very well, Ramola, why weep you? Your family seem to have gotten clean away, and you've been rescued from a gang rape."

  The tears trickled silently. "I do think on what will befall me, for now I shall never get a decent husband."

  "How so?"

  "No local swain will ever believe I was not flittered by the soldiers; and they are fussy about virgin brides, notwithstanding that they all go to the city to tup the whores. I see nought ahead but a short life of city whoredom."

  "You want a husband, then?"

  "Oh, certes, good sir. In Aemilia, a woman's nought without one."

  Thorolf remained silent for a space, dabbing at his cheek with a cloth Ramola had given him. At last he said: "In good sooth, it happens that I need a wife. Would the post beguile you?"

  "Why, sir, I never thought of wedding a foreigner. But in view of your acture tonight, ye cannot be all evil, even if a foreigner and a soldier. Suffer me to think on the matter. Think ye we should come to love each other, as do the luckiest couples?"

  "Belike. There is but one way to find out."

  "Whilst I think on the matter, that dried blood on your garments doth begin to stink. Let me wash them!"

  -

  A year after his departure from Rhaetia, when the last snow of spring was melting and dripping from eaves, Captain Thorolf Zigramson knocked on the door of Director Berthar's chamber of office in the Zoological Park. When he entered, Berthar leaped up, crying:

  "Thorolf! I feared you dead! What hath befallen? I see ye have a new scar."

  Thorolf touched his right cheek, where the ridged purple-and-white scar showed above the edge of his beard. "No great matter; I lost no teeth, albeit I was bedded for a fortnight in the lazaretto at Fiensi by a fever. How about you?"

  Berthar grinned. "I made the Board at last. Lust ye still after your professorship?"

  "By Kemun's antlers, indeed I do! I've seen enough soldiering for a lifetime."

  "What happened? I heard your Duke's forces were routed."

  "So they were, and soundly. The Brandescans had a mort of Serican thunder tubes, or 'guns' as they call them nowadays. We were advancing by battalions in phalanx formation ..." Thorolf narrated the Battle of Formi. "I saw that this Saracen horse were but illusions cast by the Brandescans' wizards; but by then our formations were breaking up."

  "I heard ye heroically saved the remnant of your battalion."

  Thorolf shrugged. "After our officers had fallen, I saw no way to survive save an orderly retreat, and by shouting and beating with the flat I kept them in ranks and brought them off."

  "Bravo! How didst keep your head in the confusion?"

  "Simple logic. If a group of men afoot are assailed by horsemen, which gives them the better chance of survival: to present a steady line of pikes, or to flee, presenting their defenseless backs? That's why I am now captain. The Duke offered a colonelcy if I would stay, but I declined."

  "Wherefore?"

  "Not how I wish to spend my life."

  "What next, then?" asked Berthar.

  "The regulars will take me back with a captain's rank, now that old Gunthram has retired. I might accept, if I get no academic appointment."

  "Fear not for that post at Horgus!" cried Berthar. "Betwixt my advocacy and your war record, it's as certain as the sun's rise. Tetricus is back and will help."

  "Good; but I will rejoice when 'tis in my grasp. And how wags your world?"

  "Excellent! My lady dragon hath egged, and all do eagerly await its hatch. My colleagues have accorded the mountain salamander the rank of species, which I have named Salamandra thorolfi in requital of your saving me from those bravos."

  Thorolf grinned. " 'Twill not make me as famous as Arnalt of Thessen; but 'tis earthly immortality of a sort."

  Berthar unhooked a watch the size of his fist from his belt, held it up, and stared at its single hand, while it emitted an audible clank-clank, clank-clank. "Time to close shop. Wilt dine with us?"

  "Gramercy; but where?"

  "At my home. I'm wed again."

  "So am I, to a Tyrrhenian lass. We're looking for quarters for us, our expected, and my father, who must vacate the palace for loss of the election."

  "Fetch her along!"

  -

  An hour later, Thorolf knocked on the door of Berthar's house, with a stocky, black-haired young woman on his arm. As the door opened, Thorolf suppressed a gasp. Yvette, beautiful as ever, stood in the doorway, clad like a decent bourgeois housewife. Berthar loomed behind her, saying:

  "'Thrice welcome, Thorolf. You know my wife."

  "Ah—yea indeed," said Thorolf, turning to the woman beside him. "Darling, these are Doctor Berthar and his wife, Yvette of Grintz. I present my wife, Ramola of Formi."

  "I am honor to know you," said Ramola in slow, heavily accented Rhaetian. "Excuse, please; I no speak you language much yet."

  Dinner came, with all four acting circumspectly. Thorolf retold the tale of his campaign: "... and the sad thing was that Formi was burned down after all; some drunken soldiers upset a lamp. We heard about it in Fiensi."

  Yvette asked: "Didst ever find any of those rascals who slew the old iatromagus?"

  "A curious thing, that. A month after the battle, I sat in a mughouse in Parmiglia, when a blind beggar came up, feeling his way with a stick. I gave him a few pence, whereat he asked in a Carinthian accent if he might sit for a spell to rest his feet. Although his face was dreadfully scarred and pitted, there was something familiar about him. With a little prodding he told his tale.

  "He'd soldiered for the Brandescans and had been set to mixing the devil-powder for their guns. Something went awry; the stuff exploded in his face and destroyed his sight. He thought 'twas the gods' revenge for having slain an old magician not long before.

  "When I asked if the magician was Bardi in Zurshnitt and if his name was Offo, he gave a squawk of terror and made for the door, stumbling in his haste."

  "Didst slay him as planned?" she asked.

  Thorolf shrugged. "What good? The gods—if in fact 'twas gods and not blind chance—had punished him more cruelly than ever I could. So I finished the wine I'd bought him and let him go, tapping his way and muttering. Who am I to judge the gods' revenges?"

  Afterward, Berthar took Ramola off on a tour of his terraria of frogs and salamanders, lecturing her in fluent Tyrrhenian. Yvette took Thorolf aside, saying:

  "I knew nought of this. Art happy?"

  "Within reason. And you? What of your country and your blue blood?"

  "My expedition to Grintz collapsed like a ruptured bladder. Word came that Gondomar had died in some silly skirmish; the King of Carinthia appointed a new Duke of Landai and a new Count of Grintz. These raised powerful forces to resist my restoration. So my loyal subjects melted away like the snows of spring, and I faced the alternatives of marriage, whoredom, or starvation. Oh, curse it all, if only I were not a woman and a little wisp of
one at that! Were I a man with your thews, I'd get my title back, fear not!"

  After a pause she continued: "I am sorry for Gondomar in a way. He was not truly a wicked man—dull, pompous, and insistent on his own way, but not vicious like Parthenius. I suppose he did love after his fashion. I've wondered ..." She paused again.

  "So," she resumed, "seeing no hope of resuming my rightful place, and with you away in Tyrrhenia ..." She spread her hands. "I like Berthar well enough. He's sweet-tempered, kind, and gentle, albeit he spends so much time with his stinking beasts and slimy reptiles that I see but little of him. Moreover, he's nearly old enough to be my sire; so his blood runs not so hotly as mine."

  "Meaning he can no longer futter all night every night, eh?"

  "Thorolf! Such language to a—but I forget I'm no longer a peeress."

  "I've heard blunter from you."

  "Yea, but that's the privilege of the nobly born. You commoners should use it only amongst yourselves, never to us of noble blood."

  Thorolf smiled. "I'll essay to remember, your Highness. Dost keep Berthar's house?"

  -

  About the Authors

  L. Sprague de Camp, who has over one hundred books to his credit, writes in several fields: biography, historicals, SF, and popularizations of science. But he is a master of that rare animal, humorous fantasy.

  In 1976, he received The Gandalf-Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Fantasy. And The Science Fiction Writers of America presented him with their Grand Master Nebula Award of 1978.

  Catherine Crook de Camp, Sprague's wife of half a century, personal editor, and business manager, has also collaborated with him on numerous works of science fiction and fantasy. This close and loving couple travel everywhere together and are welcome guests at fan conventions throughout the United States.

  The de Camps now live in north-central Texas, where the gentler climate and proximity to their two sons, both distinguished engineers, seem to have stimulated their literary productivity. Among their upcoming works are several novels and Sprague's autobiography Time and Chance.

  * * * * * *

  Book information

  The Spell and the Octopus

  "Put me down, Thorolf!" Countess Yvette said. "I can hold my liquor."

  "When her feet came to the floor, she pushed Thorolf down, sat on his lap, and kissed him vigorously. "There," she said. "now you shall learn what you should have found out years agone."

  "I only hope I can meet your expectations," Thorolf said.

  The countess broke off. "Thorolf, I feel very strange of a sudden!"

  "After all that liquor—but then, too, it must be time for Bardi's spell to take effect," Thorolf said sententiously.

  "Oh, I had forgotten! Ouch! I am in pain ... glub ..."

  As Thorolf gazed with mounting horror, the golden-haired woman changed before his eyes. Her limbs became limp, as if their bones had dissolved. Her face lost form and sank into her body. The thing on the settee was no longer remotely human!

  The octopus shipped tentacles around Thorolf's neck and hoisted its body into his lap. It pressed its beak against his bar chest, but did not bite him; it merely touched his skin lightly here and there. Thorolf realized it was trying to kiss him!

  The

  Pixilated

  Peeress

  L. Sprague de Camp and

  Catherine Crook de Camp

  A Del Rey Book

  BALLANTINE BOOKS – NEW YORK

  Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  A Del Rey Book

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright 1991 by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Library of Congress Catalog Number: 90-93528

  ISBN 0-345-36733-2

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Hardcover Edition: August 1991

  First Mass Market Edition: September 1992

  * * * * * *

  Back cover

  A PROBLEM IN WIZARDS

  Finding the naked countess Yvette hiding behind a bush was only the beginning of Sergeant Thorolf's problems. Yvette wanted Thorolf's cloak; then she wanted him to take her to Rhaetia, find her a wizard to change her appearance to throw off her pursuers, and—worse—pay for everything. She was fleeing Duke Gondomar, who had overrun her country, as he would like to do her person. Even so, she had the nerve to call Thorolf a common wage earner, a basely practical, unromantic Rhaetian, and as out of place as a noblewoman's consort as a pig in a horse race!

  Thorolf took Yvette to see Doctor Bardi, an ancient, slightly senile iatromage, to magically disguise her as a dark, dumpy female. Unfortunately Bardi neglected to mention that Yvette should avoid alcohol. Yvette changed as promised—but into something like an octopus.

  Keeping Yvette moist, Thorolf sought out another wizard—and that's when things really started getting tricky.