Crewel Lye

by Piers Anthony

  The tarasque figured it had me and pushed forward, mouth opening to take a juicy bite of barbarian. It’s an established fact that barbarians taste better than civilized folk do, because they are healthier, with more lean red meat.

  Well, monsters make mistakes, just as men do. I stabbed the knife blade into its black nose and twisted.

  That smarted! The creature let out a feline screech that threatened to turn my fingernails green and jerked back with unbecoming haste. I hung onto the knife, wrenching it out just ahead of a gout of blood. For the moment, the tarasque was blinded by pain.

  Naturally I followed up my advantage; I am not a warrior for nothing! I lunged again for the monster’s throat, seeking the vulnerable vein. But the head pulled back quickly. This thing wasn’t a predatory monster for nothing, either. I was a good deal more of a contest than the dragon had figured, but the odds remained in its favor, especially as it learned from its little misjudgments. I missed the throat and stumbled into the chest area.

  Actually, this wasn’t a bad place to be. The tarasque was accustomed to chasing and catching fleeing prey, not to scratching for it underfoot. Chickens scratch, not dragons! It tried to swipe at me with a forepaw, but lacked proper leverage that way, and I had no trouble avoiding the clumsy motion. Then, realizing that its right midpaw was pretty well pinned to the ground while the right forepaw was swiping, I squatted and plunged my blade through that portion that was against the ground, right above the big claws.

  Hoo, what a fuss that monster made! It yanked up the paw—but with two paws in the air at once, it lost its balance and sank down on that side. I had to scramble to avoid getting crushed under the descending carapace. This creature was armored all around its midsection, so that I could not get in a good belly-stab. Too bad; in this moment the region was wide open.

  Aha! The legs weren’t armored, just the body. Where the legs emerged from the carapace, they looked especially tender. There was room for motion around each leg so that it wouldn’t bang into the carapace. The monster would not be able to chase down swift prey without free play for the legs. It all made sense—but it offered me my opportunity.

  I dug my blade into that cavity between carapace and leg. I was rewarded by another roar of enraged anguish. I was really scoring on the monster now! Both Magician Yin and the tarasque itself had underestimated the barbarian powers of close combat, and perhaps I had done so, too. Maybe I could take this monster!

  But I had overplayed my hand. The tarasque flopped all the way to the ground, and though I had to scramble out from beneath and did so with alacrity, my knife hand got pinned between the leg and the carapace, and I was caught. That’s the one time when the leg does come up against the shell—when the creature lies down. My knife hand wasn’t hurt, but I couldn’t quite scramble free, and the mass of the monster whomped down on my left leg, crushing it. It was my turn to howl.

  The tarasque got up and turned about to come at me headfirst. I tried to fend it off with one bare hand, but one fell swoop of its forepaws nearly ripped my arm from its socket. Then the monster pinned me to the ground with one paw and got ready to bite off my face.

  “Pook! Get out of here!” I screamed, just before the slavering, blood-soaked mouth closed on my head. There was an instant of extreme discomfort as those tusks dug in—it really isn’t much fun, getting your face bitten off—then darkness.

  Pook galloped out of the alcove, his chains rattling. The monster glanced up. It wasn’t finished with me—in fact, it had hardly started on me—but the horse’s motion confused it. Maybe the sight of fleeing prey activated its chase circuit. But of course one morsel on the paw is worth two on the hoof, so the tarasque returned to the business at hand, so to speak. It chomped the rest of the way through my face.

  Pook whirled, charged back, and delivered a two-hoofed kick to the monster’s hind shell. The gross body was shoved forward, and the snoot plowed into the dirt beside my head.

  That did it. The tarasque spat out my face, shook the dirt out of its eyes, and started off after the ghost horse. This was, of course, exactly what I didn’t want, since Pook hadn’t had enough time to get clear. But I was in no position to protest, being unconscious. In fact, only now do I see in the tapestry what happened, and how it was that Pook once again rescued me. I owe a lot to that horse!

  The dragon limped, but was still able to get up respectable velocity. I had hurt it in tongue, cheek, nose, foot, and shoulder socket, but not enough to dim its fighting spirit. I had not, it seemed, slowed it enough to give Pook a decent chance.

  However, Pook was a smart animal. He remembered the route out of the maze and followed it. He did lose time going around the curves; maybe he was guided by smell and sight as well as memory and did not dare to leave the exact trail we had made, lest he get lost and confused and be trapped by the tarasque. So it was close, but he was able to remain just ahead. Perhaps the fact that he was no longer carrying my weight, added to the injuries the monster had suffered, helped; what might have been a small but critical deficit in relative velocity became a small advantage. In due course, Pook found his way to the entrance.

  But it was closed. Vines had strung themselves across it and interlaced and sprouted wicked thorns. Pook skidded to a halt, four hooves churning up turf. What was he to do now? He had no sword to cut through this mass.

  The dragon puffed up behind him. The tarasque was an oddball among dragons, possessing no fire, smoke, or steam; but when it ran, it puffed. Pook took one look to the side, realized that it was folly to remain in the maze to be chased down, and leaped into the vine-shrouded gate.

  The thorns bit cruelly into his skin, but his chains protected him some, and he was able to scramble through just as the monster came up. The tarasque snapped at Pook’s hind legs, and that was a tactical error, because those hooves shot back with a force of one horsepower and pasted it on the snout. Then the ghost horse was through, outside the maze.

  But the dragon didn’t desist. It shook its sore snoot and roared at the vines—and they shriveled and fell away. The tarasque leaped at Pook, who whirled and galloped off.

  Now the nature of the chase changed, for the terrain favored the horse. Pook began to draw ahead, but paused, as it were, in thought, and then deliberately slowed, allowing the monster to close the gap. Pook ran just ahead, always seeming about to be caught, luring the predator ever farther away from its maze. Pook was, of course, very good at this sort of thing, for this was how ghost horses earned their living—luring fools into bad regions, or scaring them away from good ones. I ought to know!

  That gave me time to heal. Fortunately, I wasn’t dead, just unconscious and face-chewed; in an hour or so, I could grow back my eyeballs and things and be as good as new. Instead of my using myself as bait to distract the monster so Pook could escape, Pook was distracting the monster so I could recover. I think that was really nice of him.

  Pook led the tarasque to the region of caves we had passed—the ones with the dimepedes. What was he contemplating? He could not hide there, for the dimes would nickel him to death.

  But it turned out he was more canny than that. Pook was a master of traps, as I had discovered when I first chased him down. He went and stood in a patch of sunlight before a deep-dark cave. The dimes avoided sun, so they did not show their silvery little snoots.

  The tarasque came up. It was a solid creature, with its heavy carapace, and maybe its injuries were telling; it had slowed and was huffing loudly. But now it thought it had trapped the horse, and it charged.

  Pook stepped aside, letting the monster burst into the cave. It disappeared into the darkness. There was a pause, then a roar that shook the hillside. The tarasque had discovered the dimepedes, or vice versa! Then the monster started to back out—but Pook braced himself and kicked with his hind hooves again at the rear of the carapace, using his horsepower to shove the monster back in.

  It was a beautiful ploy—but alas, not enough. The tarasque weighed more than Pook did, its h
uge shell made it invulnerable to kicks, and it had strong reason to get out. It hunkered down and shoved, and Pook could not confine it. Soon it got its head clear, pawed away the clinging dimepedes, and rotated to face the horse.

  Pook was no coward. He stepped close to the tarasque’s face and spun about. His chains flung out and whipped across the dragon’s head, knocking out a tooth or two, or maybe an eyeball. The monster was so surprised it pulled its head and forelegs back inside its shell—whereupon Pook kicked sand and dirt in after the head.

  It seems monsters don’t like having sand kicked in their snouts. The tarasque bellowed so hard that the sand was blown out of its neck hole and three leg holes. The carapace almost lifted off the ground, propelled by the blast. As roars go, that was a good one!

  Now the baleful head came out of the shell, teeth gleaming furiously. And Pook scored on the nose with another kick. His hind hoof jammed the sore black nose right back into the dragon’s sore head, so that the tarasque’s face became concave instead of convex, and shoved the head back into the shell.

  Pook was fighting the monster better than I had!

  Then the horse sniffed, smelling something. Quickly he trotted to the side, where a ragweed bush grew. He snatched a rag between his teeth, ripped it off, held his breath, and trotted back to the tarasque, whose head was just emerging again from the carapace. Pook flung the rag onto the monster’s nose and backed out of the way.

  Now, ragweed was not a normal choice for cloth, because of a special and objectionable quality of the rags. No one wove ragweed into rugs or clothing, except perhaps as a practical joke, and not just because the rags were ugly. But in this case—

  The tarasque sneezed. That was what ragweed did. It caused uncontrollable sneezing. Some creatures could sneeze for days after a single whiff; others could struggle to keep their heads attached. Once the monster got a good, deep whiff of the potent rag—

  It was some sneeze. The blast from it blew the leaves off bushes and stirred up little dust devils, who uttered unkind syllables and fled. The dragon’s whole body slid back a distance because of the recoil. The next sneeze slid it back some more, and the third put its tail well inside the cave. Half a dozen more sneezes had the tarasque all the way back in the cave.

  Pook trotted over to the ragweed and harvested another rag. The sneeze-dust practically oozed from it, itching to do its nefarious job. Pook tossed it into the cave, then scrambled up the hill, found some debris, and kicked it down. He managed to start a minor avalanche that piled up junk before the cave, partially blocking it. That wouldn’t stop the monster from powering out, of course, but it did tend to enclose the air and deflect the wind from the sneezes, so that the magic sneeze-dust from the rag remained mostly inside the cave. That meant the tarasque had to keep inhaling it, which in turn meant continued sneezing.

  Pook cocked an ear, listening, as the hillside shook with the reverberations. I know what he heard: a number of little sneezes along with the big ones. The dimepedes were affected, too! They would be very angry, once they managed to stop—and there, deep within their cave, was the apparent instigator of it all, the tarasque. The dimepedes could not pinch through the carapace, but they were small enough to scuttle up inside the leg holes, head hole, and tail hole, and mad enough to do considerable damage to whatever flesh they found in there. The tarasque was too deep inside the cave to escape readily this time. There was about to be a reckoning.

  Satisfied, Pook trotted back toward the maze. He had, to most intents and purposes, defeated the monster. Now he was returning to rescue me.

  But I had problems of my own. I had been healing nicely—but then the dragonflies arrived to harass me. I was just regaining consciousness when they swarmed in and blasted me with dozens of little fiery jets. Singly, each blast was painful; together, they were devastating. My newly healing skin was blistered, my clothing burned off, my hair set on fire. My sight was lost again, and my sense of smell, and then two flies zoomed down to jet into my ears and deprive me of my hearing, too. They actually tore me up much worse than the tarasque had done, now that they had me helpless. Nothing is quite as cruel as a weakling with sudden power!

  When Pook returned to pick me up, he found me lying under a cloud of dragonflies. He charged in, swishing his tail so violently that dozens of flies were knocked out of the air and sent spinning to the ground, where they detonated. The explosions were somewhat feeble, because the flies’ fuel was almost exhausted. Now Pook was strong, the dragonflies weak; they had used up most of their reserves on me, cooking my flesh. They spooked and fled. There was no point in their remaining, anyway; they had already had their vengeance by destroying my body.

  It seems Pook did not yet properly understand the full nature of my talent. Maybe he thought my recovery had been a fluke before, in the caves of the callicantzari. He did not realize how badly the tarasque had hurt me or how far I had recovered from that before the flies returned. Thus he did not understand that I would recover on my own, given a few hours. So he tried to help me.

  He rolled me over with his nose, shoved me into the bushes fringing the maze passage, and wedged me up. I rolled off and flopped back on the ground. He tried again, and again I flopped limply. One seldom realizes how useful human hands are until one observes a horse trying to pick up a man with hooves. It is just about impossible.

  My burned-off skin was now plastered with dirt, so that I looked like a zombie fried in bread crumbs. Anyone else would have sought a decent burial for the appalling remains. But Pook wouldn’t give up. He found a better place, where a low branch touched the ground, and rolled me to that, then nosed me up on it, got his head under, and finally managed to hump me off the branch and onto his back.

  My head and hands dangled on one side of his body and my feet on the other, but he was able to carry me. He took me out of the maze, then on around it, proceeding generally northwest. Probably he knew there was no help where we had been, so he was hoping there would be some where we hadn’t been.

  As the day waned, I healed partway and began to stir. Pook didn’t realize the significance of that; he might not even have distinguished my motion from that of inert flopping.

  At last he spied a cabin in a clearing in the jungle. He gave a nicker of relief and headed for it. There, perhaps, there would be human help for me.

  Chapter 9. Threnody

  I woke in a bed of fragrant ferns. I saw the interior of the cabin, neatly ordered, with shelves bearing spices and herbs. In a corner was a strange, large, hollow gourd with strings stretched lengthwise across it. And sitting in a wicker chair was a quite pretty young woman in a brown dress.

  She saw me react and got up to approach me. “So you are recovering,” she said in a low voice. “I wasn’t certain you would.”

  “Oh, I always did before,” I said. My body ached, but I knew that would soon pass as the healing was completed.

  “Your horse brought you in,” she said. “You seem to have been pretty badly burned.”

  That was when I realized that the dragonflies had returned. The awareness had faded out, but now I remembered. “Yes.”

  “I don’t get many visitors,” the woman said. “So I may be rusty on the amenities. Let me just say that my name is Threnody. I live alone and like it, and we’ll get along just fine if you keep your hands to yourself and depart as soon as you are able. Your horse is grazing outside.”

  So this was a woman who wanted to be left alone. Some were like that; I never did quite understand why. Well, I had never been one to force my attentions on anyone. Barbarians generally encountered enough willing women so that they had little taste for unwilling ones, and I don’t care what the civilized folk claim to the contrary.

  “I am Jordan the Adventurer, I heal very fast, and I have a mission to accomplish, so I’ll be on my way soon enough,” I said. “I thank you for taking care of me while I was unconscious; I must have been pretty dirty.”

  “You certainly were! I had to wash you all over. San
d was virtually embedded in your hide. I thought you were dead, but you weren’t as far gone as it seemed. I put some ointments on your burns and let you rest. You must have blundered into a dragonfly nest.” She eyed me appraisingly. “I must say, you do have a hardy constitution; you’re quite a robust figure of a man.”

  “Yeah, I’m a genuine barbarian, mostly brawn, not too much brain,” I said, smiling. Actually, I was pretty smart at the moment, because of the eye-queue spell I had accidentally invoked. “Fortunately, Pook is on hand to take care of me.”

  “Pook,” she repeated. “Your horse? Does that mean—?”

  “Yes, he is a pooka, a ghost horse. That’s why he wears those chains.”

  “You tamed a ghost horse?” she asked, surprised.

  “No. We’re just friends.”

  She laughed. She was beautiful when she did that. “Well, he’s loyal. He could have dumped you off anywhere and left you to die.” She glanced toward the kitchen corner. “Are you well enough yet to eat?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m hungry!”

  “You are recovering swiftly! You look better already.”

  “Yes, I’m always hungry after a fatal injury,” I agreed. Again she laughed, taking this as humor. She poured some gruel from the pot on her hearth into a wooden bowl and brought it to me. The stuff was as dark and liquid as her hair, but it tasted good and seemed to be nutritious; I felt rapidly stronger.

  “I have a trouser-tree growing in my yard,” she said. “Never thought I’d need it, as I prefer dresses.” She held up a pair of brown jeans. “These should fit you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I got out of the fern bed and into the jeans, and they did fit tolerably well.

  “That’s amazing,” she remarked, watching. Evidently she wasn’t one of those prudish civilized women, though in other respects she did seem civilized. “Your skin is almost whole again! You were so badly burned—”