by Tom Holt
Maybe the hermit smiled again, or maybe it was the original smile winched up another eighth of an inch.
‘When the powers that be decided that Albion was finally going into Europe and we had to start changing over to continental ways,’ said the hermit with obvious distaste, ‘a few of the more far-sighted of us reckoned that it would be a good idea to ... how shall I put it? We salted away a few essential personnel - knights and hermits and sages and the like - just in case. They had to be fairly low status, or else they’d have been missed, but with potential nevertheless. You were one of them.’
‘Oh,’ Boamund said.
‘What you might call low-flying high-flyers,’ the hermit explained. ‘Bright lights under heavy bushels. Anyway, from time to time, when we need you, we wake you up. The Grail Knights have just lost their leader, and so...’
‘Killed?’
‘Not exactly,’ said the hermit, sourly. ‘He left the Order to start a window-cleaning round in Leamington Spa. So, of course, we need a replacement. It’s a good posting,’ the hermit added, as Boamund gave him a look you could have broken up with a hammer and put in a gin and tonic. ‘Grade C status, company horse, makes you eligible for the pension scheme.’
‘That reminds me,’ Boamund started to say, but the hermit frowned at him.
‘Also,’ he went on, ‘actually finding the Grail immediately qualifies you for a place in Avalon, remission of sins and a legend. If I was a bright, ambitious young knight wanting to make my mark, I’d jump at it.’
Boamund looked at him.
‘And,’ the hermit continued, ‘if you don’t I’ll send you back to sleep until you do. Right?’
‘Right,’ said Boamund.
‘Splendid,’ said the hermit. ‘Toenail!’
The dwarf-flap in the living-room door pushed open and Toenail appeared. His arms were oily to the elbow and he was holding a spanner.
‘What?’ he said.
The hermit frowned. ‘Are you fiddling about with that motorbike again?’ he asked.
Toenail looked shiftily up over the footstool. ‘What if I am?’ he said.
The hermit gave him a despairing look. ‘Why, that’s what I want to know,’ he said. ‘If the wretched thing doesn’t work, then I’ll hex it for you, and then perhaps we won’t have so many oily fingerprints on the tea-towels.’
The dwarf scowled. ‘You leave my bike alone,’ he replied. ‘I’m a dwarf, fixing things is in our blood.’
‘Putting new washers on taps isn’t,’ replied the hermit pointedly. ‘I was soaked to the skin, that time you—’
‘That’s plumbing,’ replied the dwarf. ‘If you want plumbing done, call a plumber. Anyway, what can I do you for?’
The hermit sighed, and stared the oily footprints out of the carpet. ‘Sir Boamund will be needing some new armour,’ he said, ‘and a sword and a shield and all that sort of thing. Have a look in the cupboard under the stairs, see what we’ve got.’
‘Ah,’ said the dwarf. ‘Now you’re talking.’ He bowed and hurried away.
‘He’s a good sort, really,’ said the hermit. ‘I just wish he wouldn’t keep trying to put a saddle on the cat and ride it round the house. It doesn’t like it, you know.’ The hermit got up, shook Boamund by the hand and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘best of luck, pop in after you’ve found the Grail, tell me how you’ve got on.’
Boamund nodded. Chivalry is like that; one minute you’re sitting under a tree, chewing a blade of grass and dreaming of nothing in particular, and the next you’re in the middle of some peculiar chain of adventures, which may end up with you marrying the king’s eldest daughter but is just as likely to end up with you getting knocked off your horse and breaking your neck. You learn to go with the flow in chivalry. In that respect at least, it’s a bit like selling door to door.
‘Bye, then,’ Boamund said. ‘I’ll leave the astrolabe with you, just in case you’ve got a moment to look at it.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said the hermit. He was gradually sinking into a pool of blue light, drifting away into the heart of the great Glass Mountain. A pair of carpet slippers crackled suddenly into flame, and then there was nothing left but an empty chair. Boamund turned to go.
‘Oh yes, I forgot to mention,’ whispered a faint voice. ‘Whatever else you do, make absolutely sure you don’t go near the ...’
‘Sorry?’ Boamund asked. He waited for three minutes, but all he heard were the chimes of an ice-cream van, far away in the distance.
‘What’s this?’ Boamund asked, puzzled.
Toenail sighed. He had this feeling that Boamund was going to turn out to be a difficult bugger, and resolved to do his best to be patient. Unfortunately, patience isn’t one of the Three Dwarfish Virtues.
‘It’s a zip,’ Toenail replied. ‘Look, it does up.’
‘Does up what?’
‘Does up like this.’
‘Ow!’
Toenail sighed. ‘It’s sort of instead of a codpiece,’ he explained. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
Boamund rubbed himself painfully, and muttered words to the effect that he thought it was a bloody silly way of going about things. Toenail smiled brightly and handed him the helmet.
‘What’s this?’ Boamund asked. Toenail was getting sick of this.
‘It’s a helmet,’ he replied.
Boamund stared at it. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know I’m new to most of this, but don’t try being funny with me. A helmet is heavy and shiny and made of the finest steel. This is made of that stuff ... what did you say it was called?’
‘Plastic,’ Toenail replied, ‘or rather, fibre-glass. It’s a crash helmet. They’re different from the ones you know about.’
‘But...’
Toenail decided to be firm, otherwise they’d never get anywhere. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘in your day, you had jousting helms and fighting helms and parade helms, and they were all different, right? Well, this is a helm for riding on a motorbike. That’s why it’s different.’
Boamund started to sulk. He’d already sulked twice; once when Toenail had handed him a bike jacket and Boamund had tried to make out that only peasants and archers wore leather body armour, and once when he’d been told that he was going to be riding pillion. He’d started to say that the knight always rode the horse and the dwarf went on the pillion, but Toenail had managed to shut him up by dropping a toolkit on his foot. He anticipated big trouble very shortly.
‘And here’s your sword,’ he said, ‘and your shield.
Grab hold, while I just...’
‘Here,’ Boamund said, ‘why’re they in a canvas bag? It’s not honourable to go around with your sword cased.’
Toenail decided it wouldn’t be sensible right now to try and explain why it would be injudicious for Boamund to wear his sword. Terms like ‘arrested’ and ‘offensive weapon’ probably didn’t form part of his vocabulary. Instead, he made out that the quest demanded that he travel incognito, to save having to fight lots of tiresome jousts on the way. Oddly enough, Boamund swallowed that without a murmur.
‘Right,’ Boamund said. ‘Where’s the horse?’
‘It’s not a horse,’ Toenail replied tentatively. ‘Not as such. Look, follow me.’
He led the way out the back. There, under the washing line, stood his treasured Triumph Bonneville, the only thing in the whole world that he really and unreservedly loved.
‘What’s that?’ Boamund asked.
Toenail clenched his fists tightly and replied, ‘It’s a motorcycle. It’s like...’ He closed his eyes and ransacked his mind, pulling out the drawers and throwing their contents on to the floor. ‘It’s like a magic horse that doesn’t need shoeing,’ was the best he could come up with.
‘Does it fly?’ Boamund asked.
‘No,’ said Toenail, taken aback. ‘It goes along the ground. Downhill, with the wind behind her, she’ll do a hundred and fifteen, no worries.’
‘A hundred and fifteen what?’
‘Miles.’
‘Oh.’ Boamund frowned. ‘And then what do you do?’ he asked.
‘How do you mean?’
‘After you’ve gone a hundred and fifteen miles,’ Boamund replied. ‘Do you get another one, or...?’
‘No, no,’ Toenail said, screwing up his eyes and resisting the temptation to take a chunk out of Boamund’s kneecap. ‘A hundred and fifteen miles an hour.’
‘Hang on,’ Boamund said. ‘I thought you said it didn’t fly.’
‘She doesn’t.’
But Boamund didn’t seem convinced. ‘All the magic horses I ever heard about could fly,’ he said. ‘There was Altamont, the winged steed of Sir Grevis de Bohun. She could do three hundred and forty-two, nought to a hundred and six in four point four three—’
‘Yes, well,’ Toenail said. ‘Now—’
‘My uncle had a magic horse,’ Boamund went on, ‘he did from Caerleon to Tintagel once in an hour and seven minutes. You could really give it some welly on that horse, he used to tell me.’
‘Um...’
‘Had all the gear, too,’ Boamund continued dreamily. ‘Monoshock stirrups, power-assisted reins, three-into-one hydraulically damped underneck martingale, customised sharkskin girths with three-position auto-adjusted main buckles...’
Toenail stumped across to the bike and unscrewed the filler-cap. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we haven’t got all day, you know.’
Boamund shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where do I sit?’
‘Behind me,’ Toenail said. ‘Up you get. Got the bag?’
Boamund nodded and pulled on his helmet. Muttering something or other under his breath, Toenail opened the choke, flicked down the kickstart, and stood on it and jumped.
Needless to say, the bloody thing wouldn’t start.
Boamund tapped him on the shoulder. ‘What are you doing?’ he said.
‘I’m trying to get her to start,’ Toenail replied.
‘What, by pulling out its whatsit and jumping on it?’ Boamund replied. ‘What good’s that supposed to do? You’ll just make it cross, and then it’ll bite you or something.’
I could try and explain, Toenail thought, but why bother? He located the kickstart under the ball of his foot, lifted himself in the saddle and jumped again. As usually happened, the kickstart slipped from under his foot and came up sharply against his shin. Toenail swore.
‘Told you so,’ said Boamund. ‘Why don’t you just say the magic word?’
‘There isn’t a magic word, you pig-brained idiot!’
Boamund sighed and said something incomprehensible. At once the engine fired, revved briefly and then fell back into a soft, dreamy purring. Of the usual wittering of maladjusted tappets there was no sign. Toenail sat, open-mouthed, listening. Even the cam-chain sounded good.
‘Can we go now, please?’ Boamund said. ‘It’ll take us at least an hour, if all this thing does is—’
‘How did you do that?’ Toenail demanded. ‘She never starts first time. Never.’ He felt betrayed, somehow.
‘Simple,’ Boamund replied, ‘I said the magic word. I’m not a complete ignoramus, you know.’
Right, Toenail thought, enough is enough. You’ve asked for it. He flipped up the sidestand, trod the gearlever into first and opened the throttle. The front wheel hoisted itself gratifyingly skyward and, with a squeal of maltreated rubber, the bike careered down the drive and out into Cairngorm Avenue. By the end of the road, Toenail was doing nearly fifty, and as they went round the corner he slewed the bike down so hard that the right-hand side footrest touched down with a shower of sparks.
Magic horses be buggered, he thought. I’ll give him magic horses, the cocky little sod.
They were doing a cool seventy down Sunderland Crescent, weaving in and out round the parked cars like a demented bee, when Boamund leant forward and tapped Toenail on the shoulder.
‘All right?’ he shouted back. ‘You want me to slow down?’
‘Certainly not,’ Boamund replied. ‘Can’t you get this thing to go any faster?’
Toenail was about to say something very apposite when Boamund muttered another incomprehensible phrase and the road suddenly blurred in front of Toenail’s eyes. He screamed, but the wind tore the sound away from him. There was this furniture van, right in front of them, and ...
And then they were flying. It had been a near thing; the front tyre had skimmed the roof of the van, and quite probably he was going to have to go the round of the breakers’ yards to get another rear mudguard (you try getting a rear mudguard for a’74 Bonneville and see how you like it), but they were still alive. And airborne.
‘Put me down!’ Toenail shrieked. ‘How dare you! This is a classic bike, I’ve spent hours getting it up to concourse standard. You crash it and I’ll kill you!’
‘But it’s so slow,’ Boamund replied. ‘You hang on tight, we’ll soon be there.’
Toenail was beginning to feel sick. ‘Please,’ he said.
The laws of chivalry, which are as comprehensible and practical as the VAT regulations, ordain that a true knight shall have pity on the weak and the feeble. Boamund sighed and mumbled the correct formula, and a moment later the bike touched down on the southbound carriageway of the M18, doing approximately two hundred and forty.
Jesus Christ, thought Toenail to himself, I could write to SuperBike about this, only they’d never believe me. He exerted the full strength of his right hand on the brake lever, and slowly the bike decelerated. He made his way across to the hard shoulder, cut the engine and sat there, quivering.
‘Now what is it?’ said Boamund testily.
Toenail turned slowly round in the saddle and leant towards Boamund until their visors touched.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know you’re a knight and I’m only a dwarf, and you’ve got a Destiny and know all about the old technology and your uncle had some sort of drag-racer that could do the ton in four seconds flat, but if you pull a stunt like that ever again, I’m going to take that sword of yours and shove it right up where the sun never shines, all right?’
Three foot seven of shattered dreams and injured pride can be very persuasive sometimes, and Boamund shrugged. ‘Please yourself,’ he said. ‘I was just trying to help.’
‘Then don’t.’ Toenail jumped on the kickstart, swore, tried again and eased the bike out into the slow lane.
In the course of the next fifty miles he was overtaken by three lorries, two T-registration Mini Clubmen, a scooter and a Long Vehicle with a police escort transporting what looked like a pre-fab bridge; but he didn’t mind.
‘If,’ as he explained to Boamund when the latter implored him to try going a bit faster, ‘God had intended us to travel quickly and effortlessly from one place to another, He wouldn’t have given us the internal combustion engine.’
As far as Boamund could see, there was no answer to that.
‘Where are we going?’ Boamund asked.
Toenail took his left hand off the bars and pointed.
‘Yes,’ Boamund said, ‘I can read. But what does it mean?’
This puzzled Toenail; to him, the words ‘Service Station’ were self-explanatory. He made no effort to explain, and drove into the car park.
‘I mean,’ Boamund said, taking off his helmet and shaking his head, ‘service is what you owe to your liege lord, and a station is a military outpost. Is this where knights come to bow down before their lords and beg favours of them?’
Toenail thought of the palaver he’d been through the last time he tried to order sausage, fried bread, baked beans and toast without the fried egg, and replied, ‘Yes, sort of. You hungry?’
‘Now you mention it,’ Boamund replied, ‘yes. All I’ve had in the last fifteen hundred-odd years is a cup of poisoned milk and a biscuit.’
‘Not poisoned,’ Toenail pointed out, ‘drugged. If it’d been poisoned you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Must just have been wishful thinking, then.’
Toenail took g
reat pains to explain the system. ‘You get your tray,’ he said, ‘and you stand in line while they serve the people in front of you, and then you ask the girl behind the counter for what you want. Food-wise,’ he added. ‘And then she puts it on your tray and you take it up to the cash desk. Got that?’
Boamund nodded. ‘And then what?’ he asked.
‘Then we sit down and eat,’ Toenail said.
‘Where?’
Toenail looked up at him. ‘You what?’
‘Where do we sit?’ Boamund repeated. ‘I mean, I don’t want to make a fool of myself by sitting in a dishonourable seat.’
Jesus flaming Christ, thought Toenail to himself, why didn’t I just bring sandwiches? ‘You sit wherever you like,’ he said. ‘It’s a service station, not the Lord Mayor’s Banquet.’
‘What’s a—?’
‘Shut up.’
To do him credit, Boamund waited very patiently in the queue. He didn’t push or shove or challenge any of the lorry drivers to a duel if they trod on his foot. Toenail’s stomach began to unclench slightly.
‘Next,’ said the woman on the Hot Specials counter. Toenail asked for steak and kidney pudding and was about to move on when he heard Boamund’s voice saying:
‘I’ll have roast swan stuffed with quails, boar’s chine in honey, venison black pudding, three partridges done rare and a quart of Rhenish. Please,’ he added.
The girl looked at him.
‘I said,’ Boamund repeated, ‘I’ll have roast swan stuffed with...’
One of the few advantages of being a dwarf is that you can walk away from situations like these without anybody noticing, if necessary by ducking down between people’s legs. Very carefully, so as not to spill his gravy, Toenail started to walk...
‘Toenail!’
He stopped and sighed. Behind Boamund, quite a few people were beginning to get impatient.
‘Toenail,’ Boamund was saying, ‘you told me to ask the girl behind the counter for what I wanted to eat, and she’s saying all I can have is something called lassania.’
‘You’ll like it,’ Toenail croaked. ‘They do a very good lasagna here.’