The Dragon At War

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "I'm glad to hear it," murmured Jim.

  "As am I," said Sir John. "Nonetheless, while it was a great achievement, it did not solve all the troubles that face us. King Jean was still determined in spite of all to move an army across the Channel; such as had not been done since King William invaded and defeated the Saxons that then held this land. I am unhappy to tell you that his French Majesty still holds to that intention."

  "You think a French invasion's still a serious possibility?" Jim said, thinking of the problems faced by the Germans under Hitler, in Jim's own twentieth century, to invade across the Channel waters.

  "The danger is there," said Sir John, "if he can land an army. True, the Channel is not all that easy to cross, particularly with craft loaded with fighting men and horses and other articles of war. But, there is word that he may have assistance from some source outside our knowledge."

  "Source?" echoed Jim. Giles looked solemn.

  "Yes," said Chandos. "What source it could be puzzles us. The Lowlanders would not choose to be of any assistance to him, nor would they of Sweden and Norway. No, our information hints at something beyond this. Something that may make his invasion almost certain."

  "How sure is all this?" asked Jim.

  Sir John looked grim.

  "At the present moment," he said, "boats are building and men mustering on the shores of Normandy and Brittany, notably at Brest and Calais, to make such an invasion."

  "You mean," said Jim, a little incredulously, "he's persisting in this idea of invading all by himself? No matter how many men he brings in, he'd have all England against him!"

  "All England?" Sir John smiled a little sadly. "True, every Englishman will fight; from the King himself down to the lowest serf, once French invaders ride onto their own land. Attacked in their homes, they will fight. Or, our people of gentle blood and others who have the training for war will cheerfully muster to a levy. It's the second of these, that French King Jean expects mainly to contend with—"

  "It's beaten him before—" said Jim. "At Crecy and Poitiers."

  "True," said Chandos, "but such a levy, called by the King, gathers men swiftly—men of all ranks and weapons—but they are held together by law for only forty days. After that they're free to return home. Now, look you, this invasion threatens; but no man knows when it will come. If an English host be mustered and held in readiness, it must be fed and cared for while it waits. That will be a great expense. Also, no man knows the day it might come; not even King Jean himself; because he must wait on the proper winds. You see the problem?"

  "I think so," said Jim, thoughtfully but a little doubtfully.

  "There is great danger that a levy will be pulled together, but will wait their forty days with no invasion made; and start to return home—and what force is there to stop them if they do this? What arguments will sway them except immediate pay for the extra days?"

  "True," said Giles, as Chandos paused. "They will see the summer advancing, they will see harvest time approaching; and feel the call of their own fields and their own home duties."

  "Yes," said Chandos. "But for King Jean's soldiers it is otherwise."

  "Otherwise?" echoed Jim. "Why?"

  "Because our English royal purse is not over-heavy at the moment. Indeed, it is more often empty than full, and our King and his Court live on promises, rather than ready coin," said Chandos, "while King Jean has a deep pocket. France trades south and east; and taxes flow back to him."

  "That is true," put in Giles. "—Er, pardon me, Sir John."

  "Not at all," answered Chandos. "I wish both of you to speak freely as you will, in this matter. But to go on—also, there are many French nobles willing to pledge large amounts toward such an adventure as this invasion. Bear in mind, they pledge not for the love of their King himself. They pledge it for the adventure of it; and the lands they may win in England. You know our knights. In France they are likewise!"

  "Indeed, I do," said Jim. And indeed he did after three years now of living side by side with them. The noble class lived to fight. This was one of the problems during the long winters. There was a limit to eating and drinking, and even to sex, that made the warrior class long to be out doing what they had been taught to do since childhood, exchanging blows with their enemies.

  "So," said Chandos, "it is necessary I learn, as soon as possible, what this unknown help is that King Jean expects, that he goes on building for invasion so confidently and expensively. I have had experience with yourself and Sir Giles before, Sir James, in the matter of the rescue of our Royal Prince from France. Since then, if anything, I have come to value you even more. I would that the two of you go to France quietly and under different names; swiftly as possible, and find out for me what this other force is."

  There was silence in the solar. Angie, Jim was thinking sarcastically, would love the idea of his leaving again, so soon.

  "Well, Sir John," he said, "I'll have to speak of my leaving with my Lady-wife. Would you and Sir Giles care to move down to the Great Hall and have a few cups of wine while I see about other duties? Then we can all gather there for supper."

  "Of course. At your service, m'Lord," said Chandos smoothly. He got to his feet.

  They had all discarded their armor and weapons once they were in the solar, and Chandos's lay in an untidy heap in one corner. Like most knights of his time, he simply dropped things he took off, confident that sooner or later some servant would come along to bring them to wherever he would need them next—in this case to the room that would be prepared for him and Giles.

  "I quite understand that this is not a matter on which you can give me an answer immediately. Will you join me, then, Sir Giles?"

  "Willingly, Sir John," said Giles.

  All three of them left the solar; and Jim went with the other two to the high table in the Great Hall. There he left them, to give orders that their armor be taken to their room as soon as that was ready. Then he headed out on an errand of his own.

  Outside, it was already twilight. In the woods it would be dark, and getting darker. He picked up a man-at-arms along the way.

  "Amyth," he told him, "fetch two torches of bound twigs and bring them to me. I'll be waiting at the front gate."

  "Yes, m'Lord," answered Amyth. He was a hard-bitten man in his early thirties with a sallow face and lank black hair.

  He left at a run and caught up with Jim at the front gate, carrying not only the torches, but armed and wearing his steel cap.

  They headed out together across the open space around the castle, into the woods, with Jim leading. He saw that the reddish sun was already almost behind the tops of the trees. It seemed to descend into them as they got closer to the woods; and the upper branches of these seemed to rise blackly to block the last light of day.

  Glancing at Amyth beside him, one bundle of twigs fastened to his belt, the other in his hand but unlit, Jim saw that the man's face was more pale than usual. Once upon a time this would have puzzled Jim. It no longer did. To these people the darkness was full of dangers running from the real to the unknown and horrible.

  There was always the chance of dangerous animals, stumbled across in the dark—boar or bear. But the real fear was of any number of all sorts of supernatural beings, night-trolls, ghosts, monsters of unknown kind and variety, lying in wait for the evening traveler.

  Alone, Amyth would have been very unwilling to venture into the evening woods, even with a torch. But with his feudal Lord, a magician, behind him, the man's fear was allayed—almost.

  You never could tell what was in the darkness.

  Underneath the trees it was already the beginnings of night. They stopped and Amyth set the first of his torches afire with a pinch of tinder, flint and steel. He held it up as they went forward; and immediately its light made the darkness darker around them, so that they seemed to travel in a globe of flickering, yellow illumination, while on every side of them tree trunks, rocks and bushes loomed up unexpectedly out of the darkness, were pas
sed, and left behind.

  It was, Jim had to admit, eerie enough—even to him, since he knew that, at least in this alternate Earth, there were indeed beings besides animals that they could encounter. They were not, strictly speaking, supernatural beings. They belonged to that group of creatures Carolinus called "Naturals."

  But most were not particularly dangerous to an armed man, like the man-at-arms at his side, holding the torch high and glancing fearfully around as they went. Many of them, like the dryads, were actually friendly or harmless to human beings. There were, indeed, night-trolls, and a large, mature one of these could be a threat, perhaps; since they were easily the weight of a full-grown man and equipped with dangerous teeth and nails. But that was the extent of it.

  The Naturals were somewhere in between humans and the natural forces of this world. They were credited with owning magic by those like the man-at-arms beside him. But they really had only what might be called a single more-than-human talent apiece, which they could turn on and off, like a dog wagging its tail—but that was the extent of their abilities.

  In fact, as Carolinus had pointed out, Naturals were completely incapable of doing real magic. Only normal living creatures could do this; and of normal living creatures, the only ones who had the ability and were interested were humans—and pretty rare humans at that, Jim had gathered. Most of the people of this world were like Aargh, the wolf, who saw no good in the ability to do magic; and would just as soon not have anything to do with it.

  The only difference was that Aargh was not afraid of the dark, while the man-at-arms with him was.

  Thinking of all this had brought Jim's attention to the fact that a small wind was working its way through the woods. They must have encountered it also in the cleared space between the castle and the first of the trees; but until now, Jim at least had paid no attention to it.

  Now he was aware of its passage among the tree limbs, evidenced by soft moaning sounds that seemed to approach them from several sides at once. It was only a wind, and Jim himself was not—he told himself—in the least superstitious; but certainly the situation was one that was not exactly comforting.

  However, they were almost to their goal. It was less than a five-minute walk into the woods; and even as he thought this, they reached it.

  It was the stump of a young elm sapling, broken off about four feet above the ground and dead. A crack ran down the center of it. Jim and Amyth halted before it, and Jim reached into one of the inner pockets of his doublet. It was one of the inside pockets that Angie herself had sewn there, in most unmedieval fashion, to give him the convenience of carrying things unobviously. This world was still in the stage of carrying most articles in bags or purses, which were usually attached to belt or shoulder strap.

  From the pocket he drew a piece of red-dyed cloth fourteen inches long and about four inches wide. He tied this around the top of the elm stump, wedging a part of it firmly into a crack in the top of the stump, so that it could not simply be blown loose.

  "Now," he said to the man-at-arms, "we back off a few steps. I'm going to work a little magic—"

  Looking at the man, he saw stark fear suddenly depicted on the other man's face. It was bad enough to be in these woods at night. But to be around the working of magic, even done by his own Lord, was pushing Amyth's courage to the limit.

  "Light the other torch," said Jim compassionately, "and leave me the one you've got. Then you can back away."

  "Thank you, m'Lord," Amyth said, relieved.

  The man's teeth were literally chattering. He got the second torch alight and went off. Jim was a little amused to see that he went as far away as he could without being lost to sight in the trees, a good thirty yards or so. Jim could see the light of his torch; but that was all. Jim turned back to the stump.

  Taking the original torch, which was about three-quarters burnt down, Jim backed off from the stump himself, but only about four paces. In spite of his C rating with the Accounting Office—which Carolinus had got that high by sheer threat of withdrawing his own account—Jim knew how little he was of a real magician. But he was slowly learning more.

  He had been able to give it more study during this last winter; and been amazed at how much there was to be learned. It was something like mathematics, he thought now. As you moved up from arithmetic to algebra and on into the higher mathematics, the solution to a problem became a more complicated statement. In the case of magic, that translated into something more than the one-line commands he had been using most of the time—and would probably still go on using when possible.

  The fact was the one-line commands had been the final line of magic so elementary that the final line was all that was needed. But in this particular case, there were things to be stated before that line.

  Luckily, there was a certain amount of freedom in the way he could build the earlier parts of the command. All that was needed here was some sort of chant to use. He would chant it as he paced out a ward, a protective circle around the stick; so that only Aargh, the wolf—for whom it was intended—himself, and Angie, could come close to it.

  What Jim needed was essentially the same kind of ward Carolinus had used to protect his house from the vagabonds. He thought for a moment and then summoned up out of his memory the lines that began Alfred Noyes's poem The Highwayman.

  He began to pace out a circle about the stump, intoning the first lines of the poem. It was too bad he had to speak loud enough so that Amyth, in spite of his moving back, would hear him; and probably have his fears intensified. But that was the only way wards could be commanded into existence—at least as far as he understood, from the book titled Encyclopedie Necromantick, which Carolinus had made him swallow in taking him on as apprentice. Probably someone of Carolinus's ability could set up a ward silently; but Jim could not, at least so far.

  He chanted:

  "The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

  The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

  The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor

  and the Highwayman came riding—riding—riding—

  The Highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door…"

  To these words he added some of his own:

  "… So shall this ward keep all without.

  Until Aargh, Angie or I'm about."

  It was pretty bad poetry; and he had needed to stretch out the last two lines, to come to the end of his chant just as he completed the circle. At that moment, however, there was an interruption—but it came too late to keep him from completing a spell.

  It was a scream from behind him.

  He whirled about and held his torch high; but the light it threw showed him nothing. Cursing the man-at-arms for finally giving in to his night-fears, Jim stalked toward where Amyth's torch still burned.

  —Just then it dawned on him that it was lower down than it should be. When he reached it, he saw why. It was lying on the ground, burning with difficulty only on its uppermost side. Beside it lay Amyth's naked sword. But of Amyth, himself, there was no sign.

  Chapter Seven

  "Oh, by the way," said Jim to Yves Mortain, the chief man-at-arms, when he returned to the castle, "I've sent Amyth off with a special message. He'll be gone several weeks. Keep the matter to yourself as much as possible, will you?"

  "Yes, m'Lord," replied Yves.

  The scar-faced man's answer was perfectly automatic and obedient, but he looked at Jim penetratingly; and Jim had a strong feeling that Yves was puzzled and curious. A touch of anger kindled in Jim. If any other medieval lord had told his chief man-at-arms something, that man-at-arms would simply have accepted it. Yves's reaction was one more bit of evidence that Jim kept slipping in his efforts to act like a true knight and a Baron.

  He was always forgetting it was not the twentieth century, and treating his inferiors as if there was no difference between him and them. A lot of those on his land, consequently, had begun to react in very unmedieval fashio
n, as if they were in a position to question him about what he said. Well, he said to himself, what he had just told Yves was what he had told him—and Yves could make the best of it.

  Jim stalked off.

  All the same, he thought, it was a good thing he had smuggled Amyth's sword up into the solar, before any of the other men-at-arms saw and recognized it. He refused to think at the moment what might have snatched Amyth away. Nothing small, at any rate.

  At this point he reached the serving room, toward which he had been headed. This was the room in which the dishes were held after being brought from the kitchen, which was necessarily outside the castle, so that its wooden structure, if it caught fire, should not also set fire to the rest of the castle. This room was presided over by a fortyish, stout, and rather stern woman named Gwynneth Plyseth, and she curtsied at the sight of him.

  "Gwynneth," he said, "I'll be joining Sir Giles, and our other guest Sir John, at the high table. As soon as Lady Angela can join the rest of us, serving of dinner can begin. Will you send a message to the kitchen about that; and another message off to tell Lady Angela the rest of us are waiting?"

  "Yes, m'Lord," said Gwynneth, bobbing again.

  Jim left and went back into the Great Hall and the high table.

  "Oh, by the way," he said to Sir John as he sat down, "I haven't had time to speak to my wife yet. If you wouldn't mind not mentioning this trip to France for the moment…"

  Sir John smiled.

  "Not at all, Sir James," he said. "These things take time, as I know from my experience with my own Lady-wife. I'm in no hurry. I would gladly spend a day or two with you, taking advantage of your interesting company and that of Sir Giles, to say nothing of that of Lady Angela, herself."