Then Dinadan withdrew a great ring from a finger and gave it to Dunderkyn, who by now had lost all power of protest. The ring was set with a great stone of carnelian into which a rampant unicorn was cut deep. Then Dinadan mounted Garry again, who pawed the ground.
"Look for us back in a sennight," he said. "Or a month. Or by Christmas, at longest. God keep ye, dear Coz."
And in the turn of a hand, he and Garry, and the big plowhorse at the charger's tail, were gone and enveloped in darkness; and Dunderkyn stood staring and silent, dazed and dumbfounded by conflicting emotions.
* * *
Sir Dinadan rode till dawn, leaving the course and the pace to Garry; and heavy-footed Punch followed close. Owing to natural obstructions and darkness, the pace was slow and the course twisty. By first dawn light, he recognized the surrounding shaws and moors as a waste area of his own lordship which he and Garry had seen before in idle excursions; so he turned right, for that way lay his northern and nearest boundary. He rode at a better pace until the sun won clear of the crags and hanging woods of Dragonridge in the East, then dismounted at a spring in the edge of a great forest of oaks.
He threw down his cumbersome lance and mailed gauntlets and then, still helmeted and sworded, freed both horses of bits, saddles, and all burdens, let them drink their fill, and measured out beans and oats to them. Not till then did he unhelm and slake his own thirst. Then he cast off his massive belt and its weight of long sword, short sword, and dagger, and breakfasted hurriedly. He was uncomfortable in his heavy harness, but as he intended to up and ride again soon, he dared not risk any major unbucklings: so, when the horses had emptied their nosebags and rolled in the ferns to their hearts' content, he mounted and marched again.
The country was of heathered moor broken by wooded knolls and projections of the vast forest to the westward. Not so much of human habitation as a feather of hearth-smoke showed in any direction; but, the season pressing upon the feast-day of Saint Michael, the bloom of the archangel's azure daisies curled low about the edges of shaw and forest like fairy smoke. The air was bright and clear and the cloudless sky as high as heaven itself. Dinadan's heart lifted; and, for all their burdens of man, arms, saddles, and provender, the big horses pranced. Grouse whirred up and away, and a wild russet sow and her half-grown pigs plunged and scattered from their path. Red harts and hinds, and smaller fallow deer, leaped aside or turned and regarded them with gentle eyes.
At noon, Dinadan got down and again unburdened and unbitted Garry and Punch beside a spring in a shady glade. Now he was happier than he had been at breakfast time. After tending the horses, he unlatched his helm and cast it down atop the discarded lance and sworded belt.
"That's better!" he exclaimed and set to work at loosing his body-armor.
This was no easy task, for some of the joinder-points were behind and at least one of these was quite out of his reach. But he was in no mood to be denied and was soon entirely free of his hardware, though at the cost of a twisted latch and a broken buckle. But he was too well pleased with himself to allow mere trifles to bother him. Now he dined, and that far more generously and comfortably than he had breakfasted. He ate all of a medium-sized squab pie save the pastry, which he shared fairly between the horses. He took a drag at the two-gallon leather bottle, which was full of strong ale. He ate a plum tart, and a strawberry tart, again giving the pastry to his attentive companions.
"The first time in a year that I've truly enjoyed victuals and drink!" he exclaimed, and took another drag at the bottle.
He lay on his back in soft fern and sighed, "If I had brought along a lute I could make a song now—the first song in many dreary dumb months." But having no lute, he slept.
* * *
He awoke at sunset, but remained awake only enough to bait the horses and dispose of another pie and a few more tarts. His next awaking was at dawn; and within the hour he had Garry and Punch ready to march. But readying himself proved more difficult, and when it came to fastening the backplate, which depended upon the twisted latch and broken buckle, quite impossible. So he mounted and rode with his upper back protected by linen and leather only.
After half a league, he changed his course slightly to the right and so entered the heavy forest slantwise. It was an ancient forest, yet vigorous; and as he moved beneath the wide boughs he thought of nymphs and hamadryads and the like, and wished again that he had brought a lute. But so strong were his visions of luring faces and flitting limbs and the urge to catch them in song that, despite his lack of instrument, he was soon singing happily, now low, now high. This was delightful. Now that he was an errant knight again he was a poet again.
Several hours later, Garry came to a sudden halt and stood with ears pricked forward, whereupon Sir Dinadan as suddenly shut his mouth on his song and gave ear too.
"Just beyond those hollies, I make it," said the knight. "Sobs or hiccups. It sounds like someone in distress. Let's go see."
Garry advanced and Punch followed close; and so they went to and behind the clump of hollies, and the charger halted again. A human figure lay prostrate there with hands to face and shoulders quaking. It was a small man, or a mere boy, and a churl by its uncouth attire. Sir Dinadan got down, let fall his lance and went close.
"What ails you?" he asked, loudly but kindly.
The distressful quaking of the shoulders stopped instantly and for seconds the whole body lay still and flat as death. Then head and breast lifted slowly on slowly stiffening arms and a tear-stained face turned upward and backward in fearful enquiry. Then, quicker than the telling, the fellow came to his feet and stood with his back squarely to the knight.
"Tut, tut, friend," chided Dinadan mildly. "You be too big a lad to lie blubbering. What's your trouble?"
The answer, choked and broken, was quite unintelligible.
"Calm yourself and speak up like an honest man," Dinadan urged gently. "Ill not eat you nor even baste you, being neither dragon nor ogre but a Christian knight. Out with your coil now, and I´ll amend it if I can."
"My swine! All have escaped me!" cried the other.
"A swineherd, hah? And your master will whip you cruelly? Just so! Well, having no love for cruelty of any sort, nor for whippers of man or beast, I´ll look into this matter. Now lead me to your master, my poor fellow."
"Nay, not that!"
"Why not?"
"He is a mighty baron."
"Hah! A mighty baron, say you? So much the better. I've had ado with such rustic tyrants—mighty only in their own opinions—aplenty before now, and learned them the error of their ways. Lead on, lad."
"Nay, not that!" cried the swineherd; and he turned and sprang, quick as a fox, to Dinadan's side, and stood close but with averted face and added hoarsely, "Take me away!"
After shifting his ground slightly in an attempt to obtain a full view of the other's face, which was frustrated by a quick shift of foot to counter it, Dinadan protested that a swineherd was the very last thing he could find any use for in his present circumstances.
At that, the youth cried urgently, in an uneven voice, "But you could use a squire or page!—else why ride defenseless behind, and the backplate on your saddlebow?"
"You have sharp eyes, friend," said Dinadan. "And a quick wit. But your voice? What ails it? It be just at the cracking point between boy's and man's maybe, so let that question pass. Yes, I could use squire or page, or groom even—but what could I do with a swineherd now, and all my grunters long leagues behind me, rooting in my own forests?"
"Only take me away now—safe away from here—and I will squire you and e'en groom the great horses—if you be truly the merciful Christian knight you say!" cried the other in a voice even more desperate and broken than before, yet still with drooping head and averted face.
After a few moments of thought and a sigh of resignation, Dinadan replied, "Since I said it, I´ll abide by it, come what may; and I thank God there be no damosel nor wench involved in it. So get you up on the Suffolk Punch
, if you can find a place to sit or hang on."
The lad was at Punch's side before the last word was spoken, then mounted among the bags and baskets in a trice. So Dinadan remounted and Garry advanced again with Punch close on his heels.
"Faster, faster, if you love me!" cried Punch's rider.
Dinadan looked back at him and laughed.
"If our pace depended upon my love of you, lad—the more love, the more speed—we'd stand stock-still," he said, and laughed again, but not unkindly.
At that, the other uttered an inarticulate sound, but surely of anger and distress, and with hand and heel shook Punch from walk to trot, and so past knight and charger and away over moss and fern at a gallop. Then, without waiting for word or signal from his rider, Garry mended his pace too, but smoothly, and was soon alongside the gallopers; whereupon Punch snubbed himself to his customary pace.
"So you'd play me false!" barked Dinadan, reaching across and clamping an iron hand on the swineherd's shoulder. "So that's your game, rogue?—you'd run off with my horse and gear!"
The lad flinched and cried out briefly but piteously at the pain of that grip, then went all limp and hid his face and wept.
"God's wounds!" swore the knight, withdrawing his hand from the quivering, thin shoulder. "Tears at a touch! What the devil? Would you have me commend and reward you for trying to rob me? Nay, rogue, but for the soft heart an' head I was born with, I would strip off your tunic and lay on with a stirrup-leather. 'Twould be no more than my duty, knave. But to the devil with it! Get down now onto your own feet and go back to whence you came and the rogues you serve."
But the fellow made no motion to obey. Now he had both hands to his face and spoke in a desperate voice between them.
"Nay, no rogue, by my mother's soul! I rode hard for my safety, and yours—God send you wit to see it! Hark!"
Now he lowered one hand from his face and raised and turned his head this way and that.
"Hark! D'ye hear it? They be after me already!"
Dinadan too turned his head this way and that, straining his ears within his open helmet.
"A hound," he said. "Ay, a couple of hounds. They chase a stag."
"Nay, they chase me. And so you too. But never a stag nor any beast, for they be man-hunters only—trackers and tracers of escaped serfs and other poor souls in flight. But themselves be gentle an' no killers, so leave the bloodshed to the cruel men who follow them and perforce hold them on leash or lose hounds and quarry alike. Away now as you love life—whilst there is still time to win to running water and so break the scent!"
"Not me, by my halidom!" swore Dinadan. "No couple of hounds, nor yet a pack, can start me like a hare or a fox. But get you down, poor crybaby, and run if you will, and where you will, but I ride or bide at my own pleasure."
"God mend your wits!" cried the other in a bitter and frantic voice; and then, with a leap from Punch's back and a swift dash, he disappeared in the underbrush, leaving the knight gaping: for he had not fled forward nor to either flank, but rearward.
"Just so!" muttered Dinadan. "The scurvy false rogue— the vile tear-spouter—mistrusts the hounds' noses and so goes back to guide the hunt himself straightly and surely to me. Hah, the black heart of him! But why all his pother about flight to running water? Why lay he prostrate and woeful when I first came upon him, and stiffened as with the palsy of death at my voice? Ay, he was not pretending then!—or don't I, even yet, know the face of fear when I see it? The poor mad loon, crazed with terror, runs straight to his punishment—God harden his dirty hide! Hah, harky to that now!"
Now the baying of hounds was all but drowned by a louder, though farther off yet faster approaching, harsh braying of horns. Dinadan turned his head, twisting in the saddle the better to listen and look; and so did both horses, with pricking ears and rolling eyes but no shifting of hoofs. Dinadan looked for a great hart or stag to break cover in desperate flight from that pursuit, with antlers of many tines laid back on foam-flecked neck. But nothing appeared save a few hares, and a fox padding slyly and without haste. Yet the sounds of the chase neared and increased, and urgent shouts of men were added to the baying and braying. Dinadan was puzzled.
"What do they hunt then?" he asked himself. "Did the poor lad tell the truth then?—and he is their quarry, afoot or horsed?"
And now he became aware of a startling change in the clamor of the chase. Though the braying of horns and the shouting continued, the baying of the hounds had ceased. Now there fell a silence as brief as sudden, which was shattered by louder and fiercer shouts than before and a wilder blowing of horns—but still no baying of hounds.
"They've got him!—the poor fool!" cried Dinadan. "But I´ll save his dirty back, mauger my head! To the rescue now!"
Garry turned end for end at the word, without touch of bit, and Punch turned with him; and while they kept their ground on impatient hoofs, Dinadan readied himself for action. He threw down his great lance and drew his great sword.
"No call for jousting," he muttered. "'Twill be all slash an' slash again."
He brought his shield around from where it hung behind, then remembered his unarmed back and replaced it.
"But stay!" he exclaimed, checking Garry's first eager stride. "Harky to them now. They still come on, but wider spread now—and blow their horns an' bawl louder than before, but with a note of confusion now. And still the hounds run mute. Maybe they've missed their quarry. Hah! See what comes!"
It was the swineherd, running hard and wobbly, and beside him a couple of great black-and-liver hounds loping on a leash. And he came to them—and the hounds with him—gasping but speechless, and got up heavily onto Punch's back and turned him about and rode off, and the hounds with him; whereupon the gray charger turned again and followed at the same pace, neither pressing nor lagging, without "yea" or "nay" from his rider, who was struck dumb by astonishment. So they all went across fern and moss and mast, winding among great oaks and tough thickets, now at a trot and now a hand-gallop; and not till they came to a little river did the swineherd glance backward or the knight give utterance.
"Follow me close and well diddle 'em yet!" cried the lad; and, after no more than a split second's hesitation and an instant's flash of bloodless face and desperate eyes over a shoulder, he rode Punch into the water, wheeled him and went splashing upstream, knee-deep, with the hounds leaping and splashing at his stirrup.
"What the devil now?" protested Dinadan; but he knew the answer—that water holds no hoof-prints—and so let Garry follow without further protest.
After a mile or more of that splashing, the swineherd wheeled Punch to the right at a place where the stream was overhung with hazel and alder and plunged ashore there straight through the bushes, the mute hounds with him; and Garry followed eagerly, without leave or protest from his rider, who held as dumb as the hounds. Now the swineherd rode hard over moss and fern again, and kept on walloping through thick and thin till Sir Dinadan swore and even Garry lost patience. Then Garry increased his pace and was soon in the lead and snubbing to a stop; whereupon heaving Punch snubbed to a stop too; and Dinadan cried angrily, "Enough of this! I'd leifer stand an' fight twenty devils than risk the breaking of a good horse's leg. An' to what end? The horns are silent now and the chase is outrun and lost."
Without replying by word or look, the other swayed and drooped where he sat, toppled sideways, slipped, fell to earth, and lay motionless on his face. The hounds sniffed him and wagged their tails. Punch, still heaving like a bellows from his recent unwonted exercise, looked around and down in anxious concern. Dinadan dismounted hastily and knelt beside the prone figure.
"What now, poor lad?" he asked. "Are you hurt? Did you take a wound?"
He received neither word nor sign in answer, as if he had questioned deaf ears.
"A wound, poor soul!" he muttered. "And maybe mortal. But not on back or sides. Nay, no blood here. On his front then."
He shook off his mailed gloves and, with both bare hands, made g
ently to turn the swineherd over. But the fellow did not turn; so he tried again, and with a little more force though still gently, but again without success.
"Not dead anyhow, for I felt life in him," he muttered. "But he will die of a certainty if I don't find his wound an' dress it. Not swooned neither, for I felt resistance between my hands. But to turn him onto his back willy-nilly might do him mortal hurt. So what the devil?"
He got to his feet and stood perplexed. He turned his head this way and that, listening for sounds of pursuit, but caught no faintest whisper of horn or voice. He noticed then that the sun was low in the West, and the thought came suddenly that it might be only hunger and fatigue, and no wound at all, that ailed the lad. He took the leather bottle and a basket from Punch's back and turned with them to where he had left the swineherd prone on the moss: but the fellow was not there, but a pace or two away and on his feet, and leaning against Garry as if for support.
"I was afraid you had taken a wound, poor lad," said the knight. "But no blood, praise the saints! Eat and drink now whilst I unsaddle, for we have run far enough."
"Gramercy," murmured the other.
So Dinadan placed bottle and basket on the ground and set to work on the horses. When both were stripped to their sweated hides, they went to a nearby trickling spring and drank their fill; and the hounds went with them and drank too.
"Hah! Here's a mystery had slipped my mind!" exclaimed Dinadan, staring at the hounds.
He turned to the swineherd, who was kneeling now and eating ravenously.
"How came you by the hounds, lad? I'd have asked sooner, but astonishment and the shrewd pace you set jolted it out of my head."
The other did not look up, but answered low and thick, through a full mouth, "I took 'em."
The Merriest Knight Page 20