The Dragon, the Earl, and

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Jim poured himself a glass of wine and a full one for Angie, not bothering to add water to either.

  "I don't need that," said Angie, looking at her glass of wine.

  "Drink it anyway," said Jim. "You need to do something to put a period to all this."

  Angie lifted her glass to her lips, sipped at it, then took a good-sized swallow. She set the glass down, and began to talk very quickly.

  "Maybe you're right," she said. "Jim—I'd just gone downstairs to the upper hall chamber, on my way to the Great Hall itself, to put in an appearance at both places—since both of us have been more or less invisible until I went hawking this morning. I really wasn't too worn out this morning, actually. It was just that all of a sudden I couldn't join them in all their happy whooping over that little fox being killed by the hawk. The fox really never had a chance. That peregrine is big; and she can hit with her wings hard enough to knock you out of your saddle, I think."

  Angie ran down suddenly and sat still. Then she took another drink of wine.

  "Probably not that," said Jim, slowly and calmly. He was talking more to give her a chance to recover than to say anything important. "But you're right about wing-strikes. I don't know if you noticed at the time, but it was my wings that gave me the one advantage I had over Essessili—you remember the sea serpent I did single battle with when the sea serpents surrounded us last summer? I could hit him with my dragon-wings much harder than he could hit me with anything at all. Being built the way he was, like a sort of sea snake with little legs, he was too fat to curl up like a land snake and get any power into a head-strike."

  "I told you why I came back," said Angie, speaking more calmly herself now. She drank a little bit more of her wine. "Why did you?"

  "I wanted to tell you what I arranged about finding the disguised troll, here," said Jim. "I was thinking I'd find you up here, resting."

  Angie laughed. Now, for the first time, it was once more her ordinary laugh.

  "No matter how you figure it," she said, "what you found me doing was anything but resting!" She looked down at her glass. "Jim, I didn't believe it would happen this fast, but you're right. This wine does help."

  "It hits you faster after something like what you've just been through," said Jim.

  Angie sipped a bit more.

  "Well," she said, "go ahead. Tell me."

  "I had an idea," said Jim. "It was to get Mnrogar—the castle troll—and the Earl to sit down, with me as a sort of umpire; so the two of them could talk things out and get together on a way Mnrogar could come upstairs without being seen, and have a chance at sniffing at all of the guests over a period of time."

  He refilled her glass.

  "I don't need that," said Angie, looking at it.

  "Don't drink it, then," said Jim imperturbably. "The question is how the other troll can masquerade as a human."

  "And you don't know how he's doing it—I mean what kind of magic he's using—if it is magic?" Angie asked.

  "No," said Jim. "That's the puzzle. The Bishop's blessing on the castle prohibits new magic, of course; and this could be a pre-existing spell. But Naturals can't work magic. But it's hard to think of any way the other troll could do it, that isn't magical. You know, Chandos is the one who really interests me—"

  In the other room, Robert gave a tentative whimper.

  "Oh, dear," said Angie, getting to her feet. "Stay where you are. I'll bring him in here."

  "No," said Jim, getting up himself. "I'd better go down and see if I can arrange to talk to Mnrogar as soon as possible. Aargh will have to know when to meet me down there. I want to get Mnrogar talked around if I can before I come up for dinner. Will you cover for me at the high table? Tell them I'll be a little late."

  The last words were shouted after Angie, who had already disappeared into the next room. Robert's whimper ceased, in what seemed to be a relieved silence.

  "All right," Angie called back. "If you see Enna on the stairs, tell her to run back here. She should never have left this girl alone with Robert, when she knew I'd be down at dinner!"

  "Right!" said Jim. Ennelia Boyer was the serving woman Angie had brought from Malencontri, a reliable servant in her thirties. Stopping only to hook his sheathed sword on to his sword belt—in clear violation of the ordinary laws of hospitality, when one was a visitor in someone else's home—Jim headed out through the door.

  Enna could not have planned to be gone long. She was too responsible. On the other hand, Angie would not be able to go down to the high table at dinner until the older servant got back, with the wet nurse in the shape she was.

  Perhaps he should make it a point to find Enna first, before going down to Mnrogar's den. She had probably slipped downstairs to the Great Hall as soon as Angie had left, in order to see Angie in her gown at the head table there—it had been Enna who had sewn the individual glitter points of faceted silver into the mesh of the veil.

  As it happened, he met her on the stairs and she went hurrying up after his first few words of explanation. But before he could follow his original plan about Mnrogar, there was Brian on the steps below, coming up and shouting at him.

  "James—there you are!" he called. "Haste! You've just got time."

  Time? For what? Jim wondered.

  "Giles is here, after all," Brian was continuing, his voice echoing up and down the great empty center space of the tower between floors, "although he's had the ill luck to hurt his sword arm! You must come right away. I want you to see Sir Harimore in one of the bouts with blunted sword and shield against Sir Butram of Othery. They are close to being well matched, though Sir Harimore has the edge, it will be instructive for both you and Giles to see. Come quickly, they may be fighting already!"

  Brian was running up the steps, approaching around the curve of the tower down which the steps wound as he delivered his message. Jim ran down to meet him—being careful to stay next to the wall, however, since, as in most such towers, there was no kind of guard or railing on the drop-off side of the stairs.

  "Giles here?" he said happily.

  Sir Giles de Mer had been their companion in their first secret expedition into France, to rescue the young Prince, heir to the Throne of England. Giles was a Northumbrian knight who also had silkie blood in him. Brian and Jim had saved his life by carrying his dead human body back to the sea after he had been killed and dropping him into it. He had immediately come back to life as a seal; and although there had been some difficulty with him regaining human shape at all, he had finally managed it.

  He was young, square-built, fiery-tempered and blond of hair. In a dramatic departure from the custom of knights of this period, he wore a massive handlebar mustache; that, together with an oversized beak of a nose, so dominated his facial appearance that it had been some time before Jim realized that what he had taken to simply be an unshaven, though prominent, chin was actually trying to sport the equivalent of a small Vandyke beard, the sort some knights wore to counterbalance a neat little mustache.

  Jim reached Brian.

  "You say Giles is down there now—" Jim was beginning, on reaching Brian, when a voice interrupted from behind Brian.

  "Nay, nay!" it cried; and a second later Giles himself was with them. His right arm was in a sling but otherwise he looked to Jim just as usual, still in armor, spurs and the type of garments suitable to horseback journeying. "Hah! James—it is indeed good to see you!"

  In the next second Jim found his lower ribs compressed by the iron-bar embrace of Giles's unslung arm, while enduring a bristly kiss on either cheek from the Northumbrian knight—Giles clearly not having shaved for at least several days.

  "It's good to see you too, Giles!" said Jim, with real feeling. If Brian was his best friend, Giles was certainly the next thing to that. "How did you hurt your arm?"

  "Was but a foolish fall from my horse, in dealing with some outlaws we met on the way down. This cold winter weather, they starve in the wild woods and are savage as animals—"

 
"Come! Come!" said Brian, stamping his foot on the stone steps in impatience.

  "We'd better go, Giles," said Jim. "We'll have a chance to talk later!"

  They all hurried back down the steps, Brian leading. They went down to ground level and out through the Great Hall to the area that had been kept cleared of snow for the tournaments to be held later.

  Looking toward a makeshift stand for the more important people there, Jim saw the Earl and the Bishop—and Agatha right beside the Bishop, chattering away in his ear, Jim noticed; although the Bishop seemed hardly to listen to her.

  The Bishop's attention was all fixed on the three sword-bouts that were going on down on the field. He, Agatha, the Earl, the boy-Bishop—a lad whose function Jim did not fully understand even now—and Chandos all sat on the top level of the stands, muffled in clothing and furs, watching the three contests.

  With Brian leading the way, Jim and Giles pushed their way through the crowd standing particularly before the second fight, leave! My pardon; but Sir James must see this at close hand. It is a matter of importance!"

  There was a regular trail of exclamations that accompanied their passage through the crowd, "Ho!"s and "Hah!"s of resentment and outrage at being rudely pushed aside. But, seeing it was Jim following Sir Brian—who was in any case respected for his own weapon prowess—and they followed by a knight with his arm in a sling, common courtesy, to say nothing of respect for the fact that Jim had been honored with a seat at the high table, kept any one of those pushed aside from making any further objection.

  Brian got them at last to the center of the front rank of standing observers. Sir Harimore, Jim saw, was already busy against a somewhat older, considerably broader and heavier knight who must be Sir Butram of Othery.

  "Hah! Capital! Featly done, Sir Harimore!" cried Brian, as soon as they were in a position to watch. "Did you see that, James— Giles? How he made Sir Butram miss his stroke into empty air? Watch closely, now, for it is an interesting contest. Sir Butram is the stronger; and much quicker of hand than most would think, so that it is perilous to get close to him. Sir Harimore, though the lighter man, is countering this with skill and his own quickness of movement. Watch how he will move in and move out again, to try to tempt Sir Butram into moving to follow him. But Sir Butram is old and wise in battle, and not to be cozened so easily—there, Sir Butram takes one step; but it is one step only, and he has his feet planted solidly again almost immediately. He will not let Sir Harimore wear him out easily by tempting him into too much response. He forces Sir Harimore to come to him; and then in the end Sir Harimore must take some chances. But I will wager that in the end it is Sir Harimore who wins the bout…"

  Brian continued with a continuous rattle of comment and criticism, reminiscent to Jim of the blow-by-blow announcing to be heard from a radio announcer at a sporting event. Jim had intended to talk quietly to Giles as they watched, and find out more about Giles's accident and his late arrival; but he found Giles was in no mood to do anything but listen to Brian and fix his own fascinated eyes on the contest before them.

  The same thing was true of those standing nearby within earshot. Clearly, there was a great deal of respect for Sir Brian's expertise and critical skill.

  "—Sir Butram takes two steps backward. Now the ploys are reversed. It is Sir Butram who tempts Sir Harimore to follow. Sir Harimore moves in—hah!"

  Sir Harimore had indeed moved in; and, quicker than Jim would have thought possible, Sir Butram was suddenly ringing blows of his broadsword—lighter and shorter than Jim, like most untutored twentieth-century people, had imagined the weapon to be before he got back into this fourteenth-century world and saw the actual weapon—from all angles upon his opponent.

  "—But Sir Harimore guards himself well—note the angling of his shield, James, that which I have tried so hard to teach you, so the blade will go off at a slant. Now Sir Harimore has backed out of arm range; and Sir Butram stands where he stood, still inviting Sir Harimore to close—"

  Over the sound of the other two clusters of viewers watching the other two bouts, over the silence of those around Brian who were all straining to hear his words, there rose, suddenly and eerily under the forenoon sun, the long wavering howl of a wolf.

  The three pairs of fighters with their blunted weapons paid no attention. But those watching who were not already silent, suddenly fell silent.

  "An omen," muttered someone behind Jim.

  "An ill omen," said another voice.

  Indeed, thought Jim, it was a common belief. A wolf's howl by daylight—among many other such unusual events—was considered by these people to foretell some coming disaster. In fact, it was an eerie sound calculated to bring about a chill in the spine and abrupt silence.

  It did not chill him, however. He was no reader of the ordinary howls of wolves; but he had heard this lupine voice many times before. More than that, he recognized it as a message directed at him.

  It was the howl of Aargh, less than a quarter-mile away.

  Chapter 20

  That howl could only mean that Aargh was close, Mnrogar was in his under-castle den and Aargh was ready to be with him when he tried to talk the troll into meeting the Earl.

  "Giles," Jim muttered into the shorter knight's ear, in too low a voice for those around to hear.

  "Eh?" Giles tore his eyes reluctantly from the bout between Sir Harimore and Sir Butram. Brian, a little in front of them now, was effectively lecturing the whole crowd, paying no particular attention to Jim and Giles as he had in the beginning.

  "I'm going to slip away," said Jim, still in the same low voice. "I must leave. I'll see you both later. If any in the crowd ask about my leaving, tell them I've gone to investigate the wolf's howl by ways magical."

  Giles was anything but slow-witted. He nodded without answering aloud.

  Jim turned; and gently, begging people's pardons in a low voice, pushed his way to the back of the crowd. Then he moved as rapidly as he could without seeming to run, back to the castle.

  He kept to this controlled pace as long as there was anyone to see him. But once he was on the stairs leading down from the stable area on the ground floor, he went as fast as he could, stopping at the last moment to snatch a bundle of burning twigs from their position at the stairhead, to light his way down.

  On second thought, on the fourth and last flight of stairs before he reached Mnrogar's home, he drew his sword and went the rest of the way with its sharp blade naked and ready. Brian, he found himself thinking, would have approved.

  At the lowest level the dancing flames of his burning twigs lit up the great arches and buttresses that supported the castle. He hesitated at the foot of the stairs, then advanced half a dozen steps into the lair of the troll. There was no sound, no challenge from the place's resident.

  "Mnrogar?" Jim called.

  No answer.

  "He's here," said the harsh voice of Aargh. "And what took you so long? I was at the mouth of his tunnel in the woods just outside the castle when I called you."

  "I was outside the castle myself, watching the sword-bouts," said Jim. "I came as fast as I could. Mnrogar's here? Where is he, then?"

  "Right behind you, human," said the equally unlovely voice of Mnrogar; and suddenly the troll-light was illuminating them all. Jim had spun around quickly at the first syllable at his back. Mnrogar gapped his sharp front teeth in what may have been intended to be a troll version of a grin, though there was nothing humorous about it.

  "Look at him," said Mnrogar, "with his little sword all ready. Don't you know a troll's skin can turn a sword's edge, human? We're not made of thin stuff like you!"

  "I don't need a sword to deal with you," said Jim. "The sword was only for rats—on the way down."

  "There are no rats here," growled Mnrogar. "I ate them all for a hundred years or so, and after that they stopped coming."

  He looked at Aargh.

  "And wolves do not see in total darkness either," he said, "only well in very faint
light. Were your teeth ready too, wolf?"

  "We do not see in total darkness, troll," said Aargh. "But we have a nose which sees, unlike humans and trolls. The day you can creep up on me without my knowing it will be the day after your bones have been chewed."

  And Aargh moved forward in the troll-light until he stood almost beside Jim and facing Mnrogar. Jim was reassured, but only slightly. In the troll-light, the castle troll himself bulked larger than ever. He remembered now what Mnrogar was talking about. The skin of a troll was indeed reputed to be sword-proof.

  He had always thought that was nothing more than a legend; but from the way Mnrogar talked, there must be some truth behind it—but, hadn't Aargh talked about opening a blood vessel beneath Mnrogar's arm with his teeth? That dirty, yellow-brown skin could not be completely unpierceable.

  "There's more than just the edge of my sword, Mnrogar, remember," he said. "There's the point. Nonetheless, as I said, I don't need a sword as long as I have magic."

  He sheathed it, as evidence of what he was saying.

  "As for that magic, do I have to prove it upon you once more?"

  "Noooo!" The troll's answer was a howl, as fierce as it was filled with inner pain. "Say what you have to say and leave. I love you not. Neither of you!"

  "Who loves you, Mnrogar?" said Aargh, and his jaws opened in silent laughter.

  "None. And I need none!"

  "None?" said Aargh. "In the two thousand years you have kept this territory against all other trolls, it has never once crossed your mind that you might like, for a moment, only to set eyes on another of your own kind, possibly under some condition where you could talk rather than fight? You've not thought of this? I tell you, Mnrogar, I have, and my life has been short, very short indeed compared to yours—but long enough so that there have been moments when I found myself longing to greet an old pack-mate once more. If you feared me so little, why did you talk to me when I first found my way down here? Why didn't you just try to kill and eat me?"