Quicksilver's Knight

by Christopher Stasheff

  "No!" she cried, but not quite quickly enough; the earth erupted in a ring all about them, blowing up in a cloud of dirt that flung outward with a huge booming, and the outlaws cried out in fear and alarm, crowding backwards just long enough for Quicksilver to shout again, "No! I gave my word!" Then, never taking her eyes from Geoffrey's, "If you strike, he is freed to use his witch-power—as he has done even now; but where only dirt flew up here, he could bring flame! Could you not, sir?"

  "I could," Geoffrey called loudly and clearly, but wondered how she knew. Had she fought a warlock before? Was that the source of her bitterness?

  "Then rain fire!" the leader of her bodyguard shouted. "We will die before we leave her to you!"

  The whole army roared agreement and pressed in.

  There was only a moment to begin slaughter, or find a way out—and Geoffrey stepped right up against Quicksilver, caught her body up against his and bent all his attention on a little glade by a river that he had studied, a dozen miles away. The double crack of imploding and exploding air battered their eardrums, and his concentration slipped; he could only hold it for a split second, with that wondrous body pressed against his, especially as it began to writhe; but Quicksilver raged, "Let me go! Oh, let me go!" and wrenched herself free, leaping back.

  Automatically, Geoffrey brought his sword back up to her throat.

  She ignored the threat, only glared into his eyes. "What have you done with my band?"

  With peripheral vision, Geoffrey registered the presence of the glade he had pictured, of the absence of battle cries and rattle of steel, of a silence broken only by the purling of a brook and the calls of songbirds. "They are where they were. It is we who have gone, not they."

  Her voice shook. "What warlock's trick is this?"

  "Only teleportation," he told her, "only moving myself, and whatsoever I clung to. It was the only way to arrest you as I said I would, but without hurting your people, as I said I would not."

  "So you have kept your word," she said bitterly, "and I am your captive. Have your way with me, then, since I cannot prevent you—but never dare turn your back on me, or I shall slay you!"

  "Nay," Geoffrey replied. "I have never forced a woman, and shall not do so now. Yet I wish you were not an outlaw and a murderer, for I would rather woo you than arrest you."

  "I am what I am," Quicksilver snapped, "and what men have made me."

  "Yet it was not I who made you so." Geoffrey lowered his point, frowning, still exercising every jot of willpower to keep his gaze on her eyes. "It was not I who gave you cause for grief. Why then do you hate me so?"

  "Because you fight for them, you fight to enforce the law that upholds them, though it allows them to commit sins that would be high crimes, were a peasant to seek to behave so to a lord's daughter! Yet I am only a daughter of a squire, so the law you claim to enforce will not protect me! Aye, and I do not doubt that you would have done as they did, if you'd had the chance!"

  "I would not." Geoffrey's voice lowered. "And certainly never against you."

  Quicksilver's lip curled. "Oh assuredly, you would not! And how can you prove that, sir?"

  "Why," said Geoffrey simply, "because I have the chance now, but will not do it."

  For a moment, there was stark fear in Quicksilver's eyes, and she flinched away a step—but Geoffrey made no move to follow, only kept his eyes on her face and said softly, "Do me this courtesy, at least—make it less trying for me to keep my resolve. Bind up your halter again; cover yourself, so that my blood may rage less fiercely through me, and my own loins may not rage at me for a fool."

  For a moment, she stared at him in surprise. Then a smile spread slowly, and she said, "Nay, I think not—since it causes you pain."

  "Why, as you will," Geoffrey groaned. Then a thought struck him. He dropped his gaze, letting himself drink in fully the sight of her naked breasts, letting the feelings inspired thrill through him, like the sweetest of wines in his blood, and breathed, "Though truth to tell, it gives me great delight, too."

  Quicksilver stared, taken aback, then blushed furiously and caught up her halter to tie it behind her neck again in quick, angry movements.

  "I thank you," Geoffrey sighed in relief, "I think..."

  "Treasure the memory, sir, for you'll not see them again!" Quicksilver snapped.

  "You shall haunt my dreams, I assure you," Geoffrey groaned. "Take pity, cruel wanton .. . "

  "I am no wanton, but a swordswoman!"

  "Then you are one who does not mind behaving at least a little like a wanton," Geoffrey clarified. "Nay, take pity—distract me from thoughts of desire. Tell me what score this is that you hold against men—though I gather 'tis noble men, not common, whom you hate."

  "For the common I have contempt," Quicksilver said, frowning, "or at least, for their weakness and crudeness. For the noble, I have hatred for the ways in which they sought to exploit me—but for their weakness, too; there's not a man I have met who can stand against me."

  Geoffrey looked up sharply, then held his gaze steady on hers. She did not waver a trace, but after a minute admitted, "Till now."

  "I thank you for the courtesy." Geoffrey inclined his head, then sat down beside the brook—though warily, since she might take the chance to flee or attack. "Come, sit down beside me, and tell me the manner of it—for I am sworn to uphold the Queen's Law, and if any have broken that law in wronging you, I shall bring them to justice, too."

  "Oh, I am sure they did not," she said sourly, but sat beside him anyway—sat gingerly and lightly, as though ready to flee in an instant, and well beyond his reach; but she sat nonetheless. "I am sure they did not, for it is truly the King's Law you uphold, not the Queen's."

  "Only Catharine is monarch by right of birth," Geoffrey told her. "Tuan's claim is by marriage to her. It is she who makes the laws; he does only as she asks, which is to enforce her precepts, and keep her barons in order."

  Quicksilver frowned. "I have heard no word of this."

  "It is not noised abroad," Geoffrey told her, "but those who do know the Court have thought through that much for themselves."

  "Nevertheless," Quicksilver said, "the Queen's Law was made by kings—her father and her grandfather and ancestors. Has she transformed all its provisions that allow women to be used and tossed aside?"

  "All she has encountered," Geoffrey qualified.

  "Which means there is one law for noble women, and another for their commoner sisters!" Quicksilver held up a hand to forestall his answer. "Nay, sir, hear what I have learned from living—then tell me if you can deny it."

  "If I can, I will prove it on their bodies," Geoffrey said, frowning, "they who have hurt you. If I cannot, I will petition the Queen."

  "But if you believe me, yet find that what they did to me was legal, you will nevertheless not seek revenge for me."

  Geoffrey gazed at her a long moment, then said, "I have not that right—for you are not my sister, nor my wife, nor my fiancee."

  "And you have no wish for me to be," she said with a sardonic smile.

  Geoffrey just sat there gazing at her while the tumult of emotions swirled within him, and she gradually lost her smile.

  Then, finally, he said, "Not upon such short acquaintance—and you must admit, our first interchange has scarcely been friendly. Nay, tell me your tale, that I may ponder the case."

  She looked at him as though it were on the tip of her tongue to demand which case he meant, but she thought, better of it, and composed herself to tell him the story. "I am called 'Quicksilver' now, but I was born plain Jane, of the village of Dungreigh. My father was a squire."

  "A squire?" Geoffrey looked up. "But never a knight?"

  "No," she said sharply, "but there was no shame for him thereby, for he was not nobly born, nor even the son of a knight, but only a serf who followed the plow."

  Geoffrey nodded. "He was a serf pressed into service by his lord."

  "Aye, service for a knight bachelor, the son of Si
r Grayling, who held the village of Dungreigh and the farms about it as his fief. Sir Dunmore, his son, was newly knighted, and had need of a squire."

  "But was himself too young, too poor, and too green to sponsor a young knight's son as his squire," Geoffrey interpreted.

  "I see you know the ways of chivalry well. Thus it was, and therefore Sir Grayling bade my father Perkin to follow after Sir Dunmore—though he was not my father then, of course..."

  "Of course," Geoffrey agreed. "If he'd had a wife and bairns, his lord would never have thought to send him travelling so. Tell me, was he wed?"

  "Nay, though he and my mother already regarded one another with fond and admiring eyes, or so they told me. Being young and without bonds, Perkin was glad to ride with Sir Dunmore, to buckle him into his armor, then polish it after the fight, and to bear his sword and shield." Geoffrey smiled. "He went willingly, then?"

  "Aye, even eagerly, for what young man does not dream of seeing something of the world beyond his own village? Or what young woman either, for that matter, though we are not like to have the chance," Quicksilver said bitterly.

  "Be fair," Geoffrey urged. "Few young men have the chance, either."

  "There's some truth in that, at least for a serf," Quicksilver admitted, "and my father Perkin was very glad of it. He followed Sir Dunmore from one tournament to another for five years, while Sir Dunmore accumulated honor, glory, and some wealth."

  "He was an able fighter, then," Geoffrey noted. Tournament knights made money by ransoming the arms and armor of the knights they defeated.

  "Aye, though he had need for my father to pull him out from the press of bodies in the melee more than once," Quicksilver said, with a touch of pride, "so Father gained some little wealth too, in reward. Still, both longed for a real war."

  "With real glory," Geoffrey murmured, "and real loot."

  "Even so. It was the Barons' War against Queen Catharine, which your father won for her..."

  "Well, not he alone," Geoffrey hedged, though he had to admit his father had been surprisingly adroit in welding together an alliance of the oddest sorts of soldiers to stand up to the barons. Really, he was quite surprised at the old fellow. He had made a careful study of that battle, from the reports of those who had been there, and knew just how well his father had done—but was also sure that though he might know, his father didn't. "But Sir Dunmore was the son of a southern lord, and the vassal of Count Laeg, who was himself vassal to Lord Loguire—or to the son who usurped his rank, I should say: Anselm, who did raise the rebellion against the Crown. How did Sir Dunmore come to fight for the Queen?"

  "Because Sir Grayling his father was prudent," Quicksilver explained, "and sent his son to fight for the Crown, so that no matter who should win, the family would not lose."

  Geoffrey nodded—it was a common enough stratagem, though it cost father and son dearly in anxiety and, frequently, grief and guilt. "Your father went with Sir Dunmore, of course."

  "Aye, and from that came five years in the Queen's service. Then Sir Grayling died, and Sir Dunmore and Father came back to Dungreigh, to marry and become landholders—for Sir Dunmore inherited his father's estate, and thereby had means enough to bring another knight's son to his court as his squire. My father thereby retired from the field and found he was no longer a serf, but a man of means—for he had prudently saved what Sir Dunmore paid him, and some prize money of his own, from enemies he had captured in the field. He bought several farms from Sir Dunmore..."

  "Bought! Do you not mean that he held them enfeoffed?"

  "Nay, for he is a squire, not a knight. But you have the gist of it," she said bitterly. "If he died without heir, his lands reverted to Sir Dunmore, or his heir."

  Geoffrey wondered at the bitterness, but was sure he would learn the reason for it. "Surely there was money enough for a wedding also."

  "Aye; he wed the prettiest lass in the village—or so he assured me, though my mother denies it..." For a moment, her face lapsed into a fond smile that was tinged with longing, but stern discipline quickly erased it. "He built a large house, for her to fill with children. I was the middle child of five, and the older of the two girls—but there were two brothers elder and one younger, so I learned early that a girl must stand up for herself, or be pushed aside."

  "And you were not of a temperament to be pushed aside."

  Quicksilver smiled with relish. "No, I was not."

  "Surely you did not learn swordplay from chastising your brothers!"

  "No, but they did afford me great practice at fighting with my bare hands."

  Geoffrey remembered his own childhood. "Thus it is with brothers and sisters, when they are small."

  "True," Quicksilver said, "but my father saw, and determined that I should never be at their mercy. He gave lessons in swordplay to all his children, not the boys alone. He also taught us to fight with wooden knives, and quarterstaves, and taught us archery."

  "Your mother must not have been pleased with such unladylike pursuits."

  "She was not. She retaliated by teaching us all to clean and cook, reminding us that we were, after all, of peasant stock, and that his sons might yet be glad of a few skills that would make them more valuable to their lord, as stewards if as nothing else."

  "Or as squires," Geoffrey said softly.

  Quicksilver nodded, gazing off into the past. "So he noted; so he told them when my brothers complained of having to do 'women's work.' Father told them of his labors for Sir Dunmore, told them so often that they ceased fussing to avoid his lectures."

  Geoffrey grinned, feeling a bond with boys he had never met. "It does not sound like a noisome childhood."

  "Oh, it was not," Quicksilver said softly. "Noisy, perhaps, but never noisome. We quarreled and we played, we fought and we rejoiced—but there was never true bitterness or enmity. However, every childhood must end." Hers had ended when her body underwent the magical transformation into womanhood. She blossomed into amazing beauty, and the village boys took notice. "I loved the life I lived," she told Geoffrey, "though your fine court ladies might sneer at it as provincial and boring—but I could think of no higher purpose than to become a wife and mother, like all the grown women I knew; I could think of no greater vocation than that, for it is the making of people and the rearing and training of their minds and souls, and surely there can be no life that serves a higher purpose."

  "No, indeed," Geoffrey said, awed, "when you think of it in those terms. Yet you seem to have been called to a vastly different role, damsel. Why did you not marry?"

  "Why, because I was revolted at the thought of climbing into bed with any of the boys I knew!" she told him. The boys, of course, had not been revolted at the thought of climbing into her bed—and they set about trying to achieve just that.

  CHAPTER 4

  "Come, sweeting!" one callow swain breathed, clasping her sharply to him one moonlit night. "You are not so far above me in birth that you should look down your nose at me—and am I not a fine figure of a man?"

  "If you can call an 'eight' a fine figure!" Angrily, Jane tried to push him away. "You are far too round above, Lumpkin, and rounder below!"

  True, but he had too much bulk to be easily pushed away, and he laughed, almost nauseating her with bad breath. "Come, I know you jest! We are alone, here in this moonlit wood, and who is to know if we share a kiss?"

  "Share your own kisses, then!" Jane hooked a foot around Lumpkin's ankle and shoved hard as she kicked back. Over her would—be lover went with a squall, and Jane was away, fleeing down the moonlit path. By the time he had climbed to his feet and come lumbering after, she was gone from sight.

  She never told her brothers, though—she knew what they would do to the uncouth youth, and did not wish to see any of them tried for murder. After all, accidents could happen. Besides, Jane was quite sure she could handle any one such lumpen suitor by herself.

  But she had not bargained for three of them to catch her alone, nor in her own father's wood! />
  Her first hint of their presence was the stifled chuckle from the thicket. Instantly, she was on her guard; still, she was somewhat surprised when a hulking plowboy stepped out from the underbrush in front of her, grinning and asking, "Well, now! And what is such a pretty morsel doing alone in the woods at night, eh?"

  "Coming from tending Granny Hacken, who is sick abed!" Jane snapped. "Step aside, Rogash, or this 'pretty morsel' will stick in your craw!"

  "Oh, I think not," Rogash said easily, "not when there are three of us to take you in small nibbles. Shall we taste, lads?"

  "Aye, we shall see if she is as hot a dish as she seems," Lumpkin chuckled from behind her, and "Not hot, for she is a sweeting," said the nasal voice of a third village boy whom Jane recognized as Barlein.

  "Would you seek to harm a virgin, then?" Jane managed to keep her voice steady, masking the anger that covered the fear.

  "Virgin!" Rogash sneered. "Nay, what virgin would be abroad in the wood by night, and alone?"

  "A virgin who has mercy on a poor old woman, and stays to see her asleep before she leaves to go to her home! But even if I were only a virgin who likes to follow the song of the nightingale, you would still be most wrong to accost me!"

  " 'Accost,' forsooth! What a grand word, for a lass who is only the daughter of a squire who was born a peasant!" Rogash nodded to Lumpkin and Barlein. "Let us 'accost' her well then, lads."

  "Hold, fools!" Jane snapped. "I have three stalwart brothers, who will flay the hides from your backs if you dare to touch me!"

  "Not when they learn you were not a virgin," Lumpkin said, gloating, and Rogash added, "For no virgin comes by night to the woods where men might lurk."

  Jane knew her brothers would never believe such a charge; she knew they would very probably kill these three clods; but she also knew that would be far too late for her. There was, however, a strong chance that her brothers and father were already abroad searching for her, so she screamed as the three youths closed in. Jane screamed again as she stepped inside Rogash's reaching hand to slam a small fist into his gut with all her strength, screamed once more as he folded over his pain and she whirled away from him to lash a kick into Barlein's stomach. She missed; the kick went low, and Barlein crumpled with a gargling scream. Somehow, though, Jane felt no guilt about it.