The Iron Tempest

by Ron Miller

  On her fifteenth birthday she was advanced from page to squire and her martial training began in earnest.

  She had thought she had been offered all she desired of the world and of life when she finally was allowed to don her new white mail and ride away from Montauban in search of her first adventure. On the day she was graduated from her long noviceship, she had met her father and brothers in the inner chamber of the Great Hall. She embraced the duke and kissed him, then each of her brothers and cousins in turn. Earlier that morning she had bathed, donned a fine linen undergarment, then a tunic, a robe, silk stockings and shoes—all of the most immaculately white materials. It was the same costume each of her brothers had worn upon their initiation and she insisted there be no deference to her sex. After a special predawn mass, she joined her family and friends for breakfast. She was given new arms and a fine Iberian horse. She was then dressed in her freshly-minted armor, created by an ancient armorer who, back in his smithy, was wringing his hands in a paroxysm of terror that he had overlooked even the most insignificant detail, though of course he had not. After her spurs were fastened to her heels a shield was hung from her neck and a helmet placed on her head. She accepted a spear of ash tipped with steel and, finally, with tears that could no longer be repressed pouring down her face, took from her father’s hands an ancient sword, newly-blessed by the priest, that had lain for generations in the family treasury. She kissed the hilt—upon the hollow she hoped soon to fill with holy relics—with trembling lips. Her father then administered the colée with his own sword, a blow that nearly knocked the kneeling girl to the floor—“So you will not forget your oath, daughter,” he explained; then, by rote, the ancient invocation: “Go, fair Bradamant! Be a true knight, courageous in the face of thy enemies. Be thou brave and upright, that God may love thee—and never forget that thou springest from a race that can never be false.” And Bradamant replied, “So I shall, Father, with God’s help!”

  Thus was Bradamant, the future flower of knighthood, armed; who despite the weight of armor and responsibility leaped with marvelous agility onto the back of her horse. The remainder of that glorious day, dedicated to the honor of the newly-made knight, was spent in games and celebration. For seven entire days the fête continued, then Bradamant rode through the castle gate into the great sinful world beyond.

  Like her brothers and cousins, she joined the emperor’s fight against the Moorish invaders and the prowess, courage, strength and valor she demonstrated in a hundred battles soon placed her among his most valued knights. When the defense of her faith called, she was in the vanguard of those who answered and there were few places in all of Europe upon which she had not spilled more than her share of bright Saracen blood.

  * * * * *

  It was evening before she arrived at the inn. It was in the midst of a miserable-looking village—not more than a score of huts—that, judging by the smell, depended upon fishing for its livelihood and had done so for a great many generations. She entered the hamlet escorted by two dozen filthy children, like a swan gliding among a bevy of frogs. There were as many dogs as children, though so mangy and dirty were all the creatures it was difficult to distinguish between them. She ignored them indiscriminately.

  The inn was the largest building in town, albeit of only two sagging stories, slumped shapelessly like a failed soufflé, as though it had been dropped into place from a height, and crowded with people, mostly locals she rightly surmised. Provincial the establishment might have been, but it was either cosmopolitan enough or dull enough that an exceedingly tall young woman in snow-white armor aroused little notice—or perhaps she was simply once again mistaken for a somewhat effeminate mercenary. In any event, the inhabitants of the low-ceilinged room were far too busy guzzling beer, ale, mead and wine to pay a newcomer very much attention. In the greasy blue haze from the ill-trimmed lamps and badly-damped stove the hunched, glowering shapes looked like the dull, ill-tempered inhabitants of a tidal pool. At her elbow four men were engaged in a shouting match of more drunken enthusiasm than virtuosity—the purpose of the argument seeming to be little more than a contest of who could longest stand the other’s spittle in his face. In one corner someone was plucking at a mistuned lute and singing a lewd ballad very, very badly. Bradamant was thankful for the singer’s general incoherency; the ribald subject of the song made her blush and her lips tightened with puritanical disapproval; she bit back the admonition she had been about to speak as the song stirred a vague, indescribable memory that inexplicably made her blush even more deeply. A few days earlier she would have either dismissed the obscenities out of hand or, if the singer persisted, knocked him over the head for his rudeness; now, to her horror and shame, she discovered a hitherto unexpressed and unsuspected ambivalence. What is this? she wondered, what is this? There had never before been any ambivalence, any doubt: black was black, white was white. There was good and evil and nothing bridged the gulf that separated them. She had heard a hundred lewd lyrics in her time, and she disapproved of them, of course, not because she understood them but because she knew they were unclean, carnal, blasphemous. The knowledge was more important than the understanding. Now, for some unfathomable and distressing reason, she seemed to grasp the meaning. What brought the blush of consternation to her cheeks was that where understanding should have brought even more profound disapproval, it had seemed to instead bring . . . rapport. She turned away, determined to hear no more of the filthy, disturbing words.

  At her other elbow three men were deeply involved in a noisily vehement dispute that had something to do with turbinado-worms. Quickly and expertly scanning the remainder of the room, she recognized Brunello immediately. The man was sitting, with several other men, hunched over a rough table—little more than a plank set on a pair of sawhorses—haphazardly shoveling food into his face with both hands. Giving no sign that she had any special interest in the man, Bradamant turned and went to the innkeeper, checked her sword and shield [as the posted sign required her to do], received in return for her request for drink and food a flagon of sour beer and a trencher of hard cheese, pickled eggs and coarse bread, then made her way to where Brunello sat working over a puddle of gristly meat, onions and small, hard potatoes. Without asking leave, she pushed her way between Brunello and his neighbor. A sharp jab from a steel-clad elbow was sufficient to remove the latter to an unobtrusive distance. She was gratified to see her quarry’s bulging, jelly-like eyes, which looked like a pair of enormous frog eggs, glance at her suspiciously, then appraisingly. Accustomed to the sexual ambiguity that resulted from her short hair, height and armor she wondered whether his interested glance was engendered by an inclination toward boys or toward girls. She considered either possibility with disgust. She appraised him as well, though with entirely dissimilar motives since he was even uglier than she had imagined he would be. He was fat and vaguely misshapen; his body looked—well, she concluded, it looked as though he’d slept in it. His nose appeared to have been inexpertly reshaped by a ball peen hammer; his stringy black beard, filled with gobbets of grease that had drooled from his mouth, grew only in patches, as though he were suffering from the mange or an infestation of ringworm; she could see heavy droplets hanging from his glossy locks. This reminded her of something.

  “Could you please pass the oil?” she asked.

  He wordlessly handed her the cruet and unabashedly watched as she smeared a chunk of the yeasty bread with the dark green olive oil and then rubbed it with garlic. She avoided looking at him, but she felt his clammy eyes upon her like a pair of small, wet sponges.

  He finally spoke and the rank humidity of his breath made her skin crawl.

  “Passing through?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she lied, “I’m on my way to find a place with Agramant.”

  “Agramant, eh? That’s not Moorish armor you’re wearing. I would have thought you Frankish, had anyone asked.”

  “It’s Frankish armor if I’m fighting for Karl and it’s Moorish armor if I’m f
ighting for Agramant.”

  “Like that, eh? Freelance, are you?”

  “Just trying to earn my way through college.”

  “A scholar, too? A little too pretty to be a scholar, I’d say.”

  “You would, eh? Then by that reasoning, you must be a genius.”

  “Well, I didn’t get to be a personal messenger of the king by being stupid!” A shadow crossed his face that Bradamant wished was literal rather than figurative. “Say,” he growled, “what did you mean by that remark?”

  “That if I’m too good-looking to be smart, than you must be too ugly to be human, dog boy.”

  “By the beard of the prophet!” the man cried, jumping to his feet and spilling the table over the diners opposite. None of them objected, but instead fell over one another in further retreat. They knew from hard experience when a fight was in the offing. He drew a dagger from his belt and waved it at her. “I’ll not take that from any tin-plated hussy!”

  The conversation, Bradamant thought too late, had not gone entirely as Melissa had coached her. There was no point in turning back now.

  “Well, which part did you object to? Being called a dog or being called a man?”

  Brunello’s face purpled and contorted in fury. It had, as Melissa had suggested, already resembled a squashed tomato—what Brunello did to it now was far beyond what ought to rightly ever be inflicted upon an innocent vegetable. Three men elsewhere in the room—all husky, iron-nerved, with thoroughly calloused sensibilities (one gutted cattle in a local abbatoir, one robbed fresh graves and the other slit throats on the highway for both profit and fun) found the sight of the furious Brunello too much to bear and hurriedly left the inn.

  Bradamant was glad that she had checked her sword, for if she had it at hand she would surely have obeyed her immediate impulse and the man would be now lying at her feet, split from stem to stern like a butchered hog. There were two objections to doing that: first, as bad as the man’s exterior was, there was no telling what awfulness lay within; and second, Brunello, however loathsome he may be, was her only link to Rashid.

  She rose to her feet unhurriedly and drew her own dagger. She fixed Brunello with a stare that would have quailed a basilisk (and had, but that’s another story). She was a full head taller than the man, who seemed to wither before her like a garden slug in the full glare of the noonday sun.

  “Prepare to die, Stybard,” growled Bradamant, who while dangerously impetuous was still no fool, “you fish-eyed son of a streetwalker!”

  “Stybard?” he asked. “Who’s Stybard?”

  “You are, you miserable mealworm. Make your peace with Allah or whatever it is you pagans do.”

  “My name’s not Stybard. My name’s Brunello.”

  “No it’s not. You’re Stybard, the man that stole my horse.”

  “It’s true, I tell you!”

  “I knew it!”

  “No! No! I didn’t steal your horse! My name’s Brunello. Ask anyone here.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Here, look here,” he said, hastily pulling a crumpled piece of parchment from his belt. She snatched it from him and gave it a quick glance. It proved to be an out-of-date weekend pass from some captain of the guard or another, but it did have Brunello’s name on it. It was spelled wrong but it was good enough. Not that it made any particular difference since she was in any case bluffing the terrified coward.

  “It seems, sir, that I mistook you for someone else,” she said, returning the paper to him and her dagger to her belt. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Quite all right,” he replied, using his sleeve to wipe away some of the perspiration that poured down his face. It left a grey swath from forehead to cheek. “Anyone can make a mistake.”

  “You’re too kind. May I buy you a drink?”

  “I, uh, I don’t see why not.” It was the last thing in the world that he wanted, but he was afraid to refuse the inflammable young lady.

  They sat, their ales before them, and Bradamant tried to reestablish the conversation.

  “You’re not a stranger here, then?” she asked.

  “I am,” he replied, then, lowering his voice conspiratorialy: “In fact, just between us, I’m on a secret mission for Agramant himself!”

  “Really?”

  “Certainly. You’d not think it to look at me, but that’s because my disguise is so effective. In truth, I’m the king’s own right hand.”

  “I knew there was something special about you.”

  “It’s hard to disguise breeding. A curse in my profession, you can understand.”

  “It’s obviously difficult for you. You should get a sorcerer to change your appearance entirely.”

  “Sorcerers aren’t that easy to find, at least ones that know what they’re doing.”

  “Shouldn’t be that difficult a spell, I wouldn’t think.”

  “You know something of magic?”

  “Not much more than the average person, I suppose.”

  “I’m a bit of an expert myself, you understand.”

  “You’re not!”

  “You’ve heard of Atalante?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “Known him for years! Met him when he was still doing card tricks for drinks! Can’t count the ales we’ve had together. Helped him out on some tough spells, I have, when the old boy’s been stuck.”

  “I know a couple of card tricks, myself.”

  “Here, I’ll show you something better than a card trick, girl . . .”

  There was suddenly a deafening noise from outside the inn, as though a building had collapsed or a cartful of winecasks had overturned. The inn shook like a wet dog.

  “Merciful Mother of God!” Bradamant cried. “What was that?”

  The air was still vibrating like an aspic when she leaped into the lane beyond the door. Barely ahead of her was the innkeeper, his family and a dozen others who had been attracted by the din. Every single one of them, even the dogs, cats, chickens and pigs, was staring openmouthed at the sky, as though at a great comet or an eclipse. Bradamant followed their gaze and when she did her mouth, too, fell open.

  Just above the rooftops was an enormous winged horse, as black as a ragged fragment torn from the midnight cloak of Nyx. She was astonished to see that it had the head and foretalons of an eagle. On its back was a knight clad in glossy black scales. Bradamant thought he looked like an enormous scorpion. As she watched, the horse and rider disappeared, keeping a course straight into the northwest. A moment later a sweeping sound rushed past Bradamant’s ears.

  “That was the great sorcerer himself,” said the innkeeper, softly, as though the magician might still be able to overhear him; at the same time, he seemed rather proud of the spectacle, as a civic booster might be in displaying a factory site to an out-of-town investor. His wife, meanwhile, was mumbling either a prayer or an incantation. Bradamant saw that most of the spectators were likewise either praying or fingering charms and talismans. “We see him pass over here often,” the innkeeper continued to no one in particular, ”sometimes closer than at other times, sometimes farther. Sometimes we see him soar so high that the stars themselves are disturbed in the eddies of his passage. Every once in a while he’ll carry off the most beautiful maiden in the vicinity. It’s gotten so no female over the age of ten, maiden or not, comely or ugly as a brick, will venture out of doors during daylight.”

  “Haven’t you tried to do anything?” asked Bradamant, astonished and disgusted at this complacent speech.

  “What would you suggest? How can we defend ourselves against such an invader? We can’t fly, can we? We’ve prayed ‘til we’re hoarse and our knees are bloody, but it’s done no good. And every one of us is in bad now with the priest for resorting to itinerant enchanters, wizards and magicians so that not only are we the poorer for having wasted our money on charms and magic philtres, but now we have to pay penance to the church as well. It’s a bloody damn nuisance, I can tell you.”

 
“Where does this sorcerer and his monster come from?” asked Bradamant.

  “He has a castle, made entirely of steel, somewhere high in the Pyrenees, up that way. Countless knights have passed by here, on their way to lay siege to that castle. None have ever returned.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Captured or killed. Fed to the hippogryph. Who knows? Who cares?”

  Bradamant was sure with a certain conviction that she would be able to succeed where all these others had failed. She knew that in proficiency with arms there were few men who were her better; with the additional advantage of the magic ring, once she procured it, there could be no question that she would be successful in rescuing Rashid.

  “Let me have one man,” she demanded of the innkeeper, “who knows the way and I’ll undertake the destruction of this magician and his steel castle.”

  The innkeeper merely looked at the slender, tawny-haired youth with mixed contempt and pity.

  “I know the way,” offered Brunello. He was, of course, going to the castle anyway and thought that the girl didn’t know this. He had been thinking that he had seldom seen more nicely-made armor than that which this brash female was wearing. He’d be able to dispose of it and the shield and sword for a nifty profit, once, of course, he had shown her that he had some parts uglier than his face. He owed himself that pleasure and her that humiliation. “I’ll come with you,” he continued, then added with a leer, “And I have some things that’ll make you glad I came along.”

  As blatant as was this crude double entendre, she wrongly assumed that he was talking about the ring, but did not show her pleasure at this mistaken confirmation.

  “All right,” she said, “I’ll accept your offer.” Meaning, of course, that she’d accept his offer of the ring once the encouraging point of her sword was at the hollow of his throat.

  The innkeeper, who was also steward of the village, provided her with a horse. She was surprised to see such a fine animal in such a place—it would be equally suited for either riding or battle—and said so to the innkeeper, who explained that a knight had left it as collateral for an unpaid bill but had never returned to redeem the animal. No doubt he had been another victim of the evil magician. She paid for it gladly, with the thought that perhaps she might be able to someday gladly restore it to its proper owner.