However, annoyingly, just at the moment, there was nothing in sight. He wandered on, looking for anyone at all: a mouse, a bird… Suddenly he almost tripped over a badger, in appearance a twin to the one he had seen galumphing by while he and Brian were holding their positions at the command of Danielle.
"Hey, wait!" he cried.
It did not seem disposed to wait. Jim flipped himself into the air on his wings and thumped again to earth, this time facing the badger.
He had it backed up against a bush. It bared its teeth in true badger fashion. Badgers, Jim remembered a zoologist saying once at a rather drunken faculty party, would tangle with anybody. This one was obviously not about to spoil the general reputation of its kind, in spite of the fact that Jim-Gorbash outweighed it something like a hundred to one.
"Take it easy," said Jim. "I just want some information. We're headed toward Castle Malvern. Will this way bring us up behind it, or to its front?"
The badger hunched its shoulders and hissed at him.
"No, really," Jim persisted. "I'm just asking."
The badger snarled and made a lunge for Jim's left forefoot.
When he snatched the foot back, the badger turned with a speed that was surprising in a creature of its apparent clumsiness, slipped around the bush and disappeared. Jim was left staring at nothing.
He turned away to find Brian, Danielle and Aragh behind him, all in a row, staring at him.
"I just wanted to get some directions from someone who knew…" he began; but his voice died in his throat at the sight of their stares. They were looking at him as if he had taken leave of his senses.
"Gorbash," said Aragh, at last, "were you trying to talk to that badger?"
"Why, yes," said Jim. "I just wanted to ask someone who knew the local area whether we would come out behind Castle Malvern, or in front of it."
"But you were talking to a badger!" said Danielle.
Brian cleared his throat.
"Sir James," he said, "did you think you recognized this particular badger as someone you knew who had also been ensorceled? Or is it that in your country badgers can talk?"
"Well, no—I mean, I didn't recognize this badger; and no, in my country badgers can't talk," said Jim. "But I thought…"
His voice failed. He had been about to cite as evidence his experience that dragons, watchbeetles and wolves could talk; but faced with those stares, he got the abrupt but certain feeling he had just managed to make a fool of himself.
"Mixed up in the head, that's what he is!" Aragh said, gruffly. "Not his fault!"
"Well," said Jim, defensively. "I talk, and I'm a dragon."
"Don't dragons talk where you come from, Sir James?" asked Danielle.
"We don't have dragons where I come from."
"Then what gave you the idea they didn't talk?" demanded Aragh. "Been overworking your brains, Gorbash, that's the trouble. Try not to think for a while."
"We have wolves where I come from"—Jim turned on him—"and they don't talk."
"Wolves don't talk? Gorbash, you're addled. How many wolves do you know?"
"I don't exactly know any. But I've seen them in… I mean, on…"
Jim realized immediately that the words "zoos" and "films" would mean as little to the three in front of him as "Social Security number" had meant to the knight, earlier. In whatever language he was speaking now, they would be nothing but meaningless noises.
"How about watchbeetles?" he demanded desperately. "When I talked to Carolinus, he poured some water on the ground and a watchbeetle came to the surface and spoke."
"Come, come, Sir James," said Brian. "Magic, of course. It had to be magic. Watchbeetles can't talk, any more than badgers can."
"Oh, well," said Jim feebly. He gave up. "Never mind. As Aragh says, maybe I've been thinking too much. Let's forget it and get going again."
They took up their route once more, and a sudden shower caught them unexpectedly. For a moment, as the raindrops pelted down hard about them, Jim looked around for shelter—then recognized that the three with him were completely ignoring the wetting. Hard on this came his own recognition that his own armored hide was scarcely conscious of the moisture; and he decided to ignore it also. After a bit, the rain ceased and the sun tried to come out.
It was now in a quarter of the western sky which caused Jim to guess at a time of about 5 p.m.—an hour Brian and Danielle would probably refer to as midway between none and compline, from the canonical hours commonly in use in the Catholic Middle Ages. Momentarily, Jim ran back over his memory to fix those hours in his mind. The earliest was "matins," at midnight. Then came "lauds," at first daylight—call it plus or minus 5 a.m., depending on the season of the year. Then "prime," at sunrise—call that 6 a.m. Then "terce," midmorning—say, 9 a.m. "Sext," at noon. "None" at midafternoon—3 p.m. "Vespers" at sunset—5 p.m. or later… Finally, "compline," before retiring; which would probably be no later than an hour or so after sunset, particularly if you were a monk and had to look forward to getting up at midnight.
He had reached this point in delving his memory, when Aragh abruptly put his nose up into the air.
"I smell smoke," he said.
Jim sniffed the breeze which was blowing from them, not toward them. His dragon's sense of smell was not so much inferior to the wolf's but that he could smell smoke himself, now that his attention had been called to it. If they could smell it when the wind was carrying the odor away from them, then whatever was burning must be merely a short distance in front of them.
Aragh broke into a trot, and Brian spurred his horse to keep up. Jim increased his pace and Danielle ran easily alongside him. They went a short distance, emerged from among the trees and stopped, to find themselves in a clearing, at one end of a double row of huts made of mud and wattle, with straw-thatched roofs. Several of these were still smoking. The short rain had fallen here, too, and the bare earth between and around the huts was darkened and, in trampled spots, muddied by the water. The trees and the thatches still dripped moisture and the air was soft and damp. On it, here, the smell of smoke was strong. It hung still, for the breeze had now stopped.
The village—if that was what it was—was silent, with no one to be seen moving about it. Except for the few huts that had caught fire—only to have their flames apparently put out by the shower—there was nothing at all happening. The only people were four or five who had evidently fallen asleep about the street or in the doorway of some hut or other. About a dozen feet in front of Jim, as he pushed past Brian and Aragh for a better look, was a half-grown girl in a robe of coarse brown cloth, lying on her side with her back to them and her black hair spread on the mud.
Jim stared. Had the people here been having some sort of celebration, at which they became so intoxicated that they did not stir to put out the fires which drunken accident had started on their meager dwellings? He took one step more toward the girl to wake her up and ask her—and at that moment some twelve or fifteen men on horseback, with steel caps, half-armor and drawn swords, rode out from between the last huts at the far end of the village and turned to face Jim and the others.
The scene before Jim seemed to jump abruptly, like a faulty movie film, from one frame to the next. All at once, he saw the village with a difference: the people lying about were not merely sleeping, they were dead—killed—and their slayers were at the other end of the village street. He took a third step forward, looked at the dead girl before him, and from this fresh angle saw her arms stretched out before her without hands. They had been cut off at the wrist.
The smell of smoke now seemed to fill his brain. He launched himself into the air, swooping forward and down upon the mounted men. He saw their swords up, catching the watery sunlight as he drove into them, but he felt no blows. Three of the horses went down under the impact of his body and he tossed two of their falling riders aside with his clawed forepaws, cutting the third man—the one most directly in front of him—almost in half with one snap of his jaws. On the
ground now, Jim reared up, striking out with claws, teeth and wings at once.
The action around him was a blur. He saw an arrow sprout suddenly, half out of the metal breastplate of a rider; and some gleaming metal drove into the fray on his right. The point of Brian's lance carried one rider clear off his horse and into another rider, who also flew from his saddle. Then the lance was dropped, and Brian's sword was cutting right and left; while under him the clumsy white charger—abruptly transformed—reared, screaming, lashing with its front hooves and savaging with its teeth, to beat to the ground the lighter horses about it.
At Jim's left a rider suddenly vanished from his saddle; and for one insane moment it was Aragh riding the mount instead, his jaws grinning as he launched himself from the leather under him into another of the opposing riders—
All at once, it was over. Two or three of the mounted men-at-arms, and as many riderless horses, were dashing off. Aragh, on the ground now, was tearing out the throats of any who still lived. Jim checked himself, snorting heavily through his nostrils, and looked around.
Neither Aragh nor Brian seemed to have been touched. Danielle, Jim was glad to see, was still several houses down the street, approaching them at a walk, bow still in hand and an arrow ready but not strung. She had stood back, it seemed, sensibly, and used her weapon as it ought to be used—from a distance.
Jim looked down at his own forearms and body. He was covered with blood, some of which was probably his own; but he felt nothing. Within, he was conscious of two conflicting emotions struggling for ascendancy. The dragon in him was savagely disappointed that there were no more enemies to kill; the man felt as if he badly wanted to be sick.
Chapter Eleven
"Hold still!" said Danielle. "How can I wash you off if you keep moving?"
He wanted to tell her that it was the dragon-adrenaline in him that was still making him twitchy. But he did not know how to explain this in terms she would understand. What had triggered him off had been a purely human horror at seeing the dead girl without hands, but after that he had been pure dragon.
Or had he? An impulse made him stop and question this. Perhaps not. Maybe he was in some ways as savage as Aragh, or Brian or those men he had killed.
"That's all right," said Danielle, having gotten him cleaned up. She was a competent, but not necessarily sympathetic, nurse. "You're cut up more than a little; but nothing important. Three or four of the cuts could use some oil and bandages. But if you keep them clean, they should all heal well, despite the lack. Don't roll in the dirt, Sir James."
"Roll? Why would I want to roll—" Jim was beginning, when Brian, who had been busy taking off his helm and gauntlets after retrieving his lance and checking it for damage, interrupted.
"It's plain to see," he said, "there's been no less than an attack on Malvern Castle. That lot of swine would not be foraying in such a manner unless the Malvern force at least were shut within walls and unable to sally. We'd best go carefully to get a look at the castle before we let the countryside know of our numbers and whereabouts."
"Catch me approaching any castle any other way." Aragh was standing nearby. Though his words were in character for the wolf, the tone was unusually mild. "And what if the castle is no longer in the hands of your lady? Shall we turn back?"
"Not far," Brian answered, tightly. His jaw muscles were lumped and the bones of his face seemed to stand out sharply under the skin. "If the castle is taken, I have a lady either to rescue or avenge—and that takes precedence over my desire to help Sir James. If unfriends indeed hold the castle, we must find another place for ourselves this night. There's an inn not too far off. But first, let's go see how matters stand with the castle."
"I can go and get back with no one seeing me," said the wolf. "Better the rest of you wait here."
"Those who got away might come back with help, if we stay here," put in Jim.
"Not with night coming on," said Brian. "Still, it won't be long until dark for us, as well. Perhaps it's best if you do scout the castle alone, Sir wolf. I and the others will head for the inn, to see if that's open to our using, or has been misused like this village. But wait—you don't know where the inn is."
"Tell me," said Aragh. "Though, given a little time, I could find it easily enough myself."
"Due west of the castle is a small hill with a crown of beech trees against the sky. If you look south from that hill's top, you'll see a place where the trees darken in a hollow, about two arrow-flights distant. You won't be able to see the inn, itself; but under those trees you'll find both it and the stream that runs by it."
"Soon," said Aragh, and was gone.
Jim, Danielle and Brian headed off through the wood, Brian leading.
"All this is familiar land to me," he explained. "As a boy I was a page here for three years, to learn my manners from Sir Orrin. My lady and I have walked or ridden over every foot of this ground, since."
The sun was setting now, and long shadows stretched out from the trees across the grass. They were not forbidding shadows, however, as they had been in Lynham forest, the night before. The evening hush lay on everything and, with half the sky overhead painted pink, for a moment the world about them seemed a different one from that holding the village they had just left.
But the moment passed. The light continued to fade and they came at last to a spot where Brian stopped abruptly, holding up his right hand to halt Jim and Danielle.
"The inn's just beyond these trees," he told them. "But walk and talk softly. Sound carries in this place, particularly when there's no wind."
They moved forward quietly together and gazed out from the shadows of the trees which the knight had indicated. They saw an open glade perhaps four hundred yards across at its narrowest. The stream Brian had spoken of to Aragh was ditched to flow completely around a long, stout building of logs, built in the center of the glade on a grassy mound of earth that seemed artificially raised within the circle of land. At the far end of the building—actually an extension of it—stood a sort of half-open shed in which two horses could be seen tethered, their heads in some sort of wall trough, feeding.
"The inn door's open, and the shutters are folded back from the windows," muttered Brian. "So they're not in a state of siege. On the other hand, it can hardly be a trap with men waiting for us inside, seeing there are only those two horses in the stable. Nor would these two feed so quietly if other horses had been taken off into the woods nearby to trick us. Those in the stable would be eager to get loose and join their stablemates. Nonetheless, we'd best wait for Aragh. Indeed I believed that, swiftly as he travels, he'd be here before us."
They waited. After only a few minutes, there was a movement behind, and Aragh was once more with them.
"Your fear's justified, Sir knight," he said. "The castle is barred and guarded. Also, I smelled blood spilled on the ground before the main gate, and the armed men on the walls talk of their lord, Sir Hugh."
"De Bois!" The name seemed to stick deep in Brian's throat.
"What other Sir Hugh could it be?" Aragh's red jaws laughed in the last of the light. "Rejoice, Sir knight! We'll both have our chance at him, shortly."
"Rejoice? With my lady no doubt in his hands, as well as her castle?"
"Perhaps she escaped," put in Jim.
"She's a de Chaney, and holds the castle for her father, who may be dead in heathen lands. She'd defend the castle to the death or her own capture." Brian's teeth clicked together. "And I won't believe in her death until I've had certain proof of it. Therefore, she's captured."
"Have it your way, Sir knight," said Aragh.
"I most surely shall, Sir wolf. And now, we need to scout this inn more closely to make sure it holds no trap for us."
Aragh's jaws laughed again.
"Did you think I'd come to meet you here without first taking a look at that box down there? I came up close behind it, before coming to you here, and listened. There's an innkeeper, his family and two men servants. Also one g
uest. And that's all!"
"Ah," said Brian. "Then we go in."
He started off and the rest of them caught up with him, walking openly across the glade in the last of the light; but a slight frown grew on the knight's face as they got closer to the ditch that separated them from the open front door.
"It's not like Master Dick Innkeeper not to be out of doors by this time to see who we are and what intentions we have," he said.
Nonetheless, he kept walking forward. His armored feet rang hollowly on the rough-hewn planks of the bridge crossing the ditch before the inn's door. He stepped onto the artificial island on which the inn was built, mounted its slight slope and walked into the gloom within, where what looked like a single torch had been lighted against the darkness. The others followed him in and found him stopped dead still, a pace inside the building.
He was staring at a lanky figure seated in a rough chair with his hose-clad legs propped up on the table before him. In one hand, the seated figure held the longest bow Jim had ever seen; and the other held an arrow loosely fitted to the string.
"And perhaps you'd better tell me who you are, now," the figure said in a soft tenor voice with an odd, musical lilt to it. "I can put an arrow through each of you before one of you could take a step, you should all know. But you do be seeming a strange pack of travelers to be together on the road, and if you have something I should be hearing, I'm prepared to listen, look you."
Chapter Twelve
"I'm Sir Brian Neville-Smythe!" said Brian, harshly. "And you might think twice about whether you could put arrows through us all before one of us could reach you. I think I might just reach you, myself!"
"Ah no, Sir knight," said the man with the bow. "Do not be thinking of that armor of yours as something to make you different from the rest. At this distance the lady's doublet and your steel coat are the same as nothing to my arrows. The dragon a blind man could not miss, look you; and as for the wolf—"