The Dragon and the Fair M

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Perhaps surprised at this unfamiliar weapon in the hands of opponents who could kill from beyond the reach of even their thrown spears, the goblins stopped again for a brief interval. But seeing how few these long-distance slayers were, they flooded on again. The horsemen, at a command from the Prince, had split themselves into two groups, each coming around an end of the footmen to meet the goblins.

  To Jim's eyes watching from above, everything being done by the human fighters, with the exception of the archery, was being performed both clumsily and in an undisciplined manner. Then he realized that he had been expecting to see an orderliness of attack all but unheard-of in any fourteenth-century battle. Particularly was this true in the case of the horsed gentry, who were used to going, individually and directly, straight toward the enemy, and to hell with anything and anyone in their way.

  For a short time, the attack of these horsemen, coming on top of the effect of the arrows, checked for a third time the forward moment of the goblins trying to go around the end of the line of footmen, even as the central part of the line, with its longer, heavier spears, was pushing back the light-bodied multitude of goblins in front of them. For that brief period, they—and the trampling, biting and kicking horses—seemed to be making a battle of it that had a promise of success.

  But then the archers, their two quivers apiece emptied, began, one by one, to turn and run back to the small door in the great gate, where other, filled, quivers were waiting to be handed to them. Taking advantage of what they must have thought of as the first signs of retreat, the goblins forged forward again, trying to get around both horsemen and spear-line.

  With a jerk, Jim came out of something very like a trance. He had been as caught up in what was happening before him as if he indeed had been down there with the castle's small army.

  "Secoh!" he called mentally, commandingly. "Get the dragons there! Now! Tell them to dive on the goblins who seek to surround our men!"

  "We're coming, m'lord!" Secoh's mind called back.

  Chapter Forty

  The dragons came. It was fairly early in the afternoon, but already the sun of these English latitudes was a red ball approaching the tops of the trees to the west. Jim knew it would seem to hang there for hours before finally slipping from sight. Through the daylight, the magic fire on the great spreading dragon wings seemed to burn somewhat palely, but it was more than plainly visible in the light of the declining northern day.

  Meanwhile, the dragons had encircled the field, and were beginning to dive on the goblins.

  High voices shrilling in panic and warnings, the goblins scattered at the first dives, forgetting all about the enemies on the ground before them. Clearly, each had in mind one thought only—Not me! Let the one stooping closest pick anyone but me!

  With this change in battle fortunes, the footmen and horsemen plainly appeared to draw fresh strength—though the horses themselves seemed somewhat of the goblins' minds, but under the urging of their riders, they pushed forward against the disorganized goblins, and for the first time hope woke in Jim that they actually might win, and the goblins might be driven back to Deep Earth.

  But the panic of the goblins did not last. It was unbelievable, Jim thought, that they should be able to adapt to changes in the fortunes of the day this quickly, without an obvious leader and organization. They must simply all think more alike than humans would in a similar situation. Already they were starting to notice that the dragons dived, but did not come all the way down with their fiery wings, to set a ring of goblins ablaze…

  If it was true, they clearly seemed to reason, that they had no real intention of coming to earth and spreading fire like a plague, then the dragons above them could be ignored.

  The goblins closed again, drove forward, and began to push both the horsemen and the spearmen back, apparently reckless of the number of their own killed to gain the ground. It was either extreme bravery on their part, or—thought Jim, remembering the scarred, cut-up figure of Tiverton hob, limp in Hob's arms after some days of being tortured by goblins—an extreme callousness even to the sufferings or death of their own kind.

  They fight like animals in a pack, Jim thought—forgetting everything except tearing into whoever was opposing them.

  Then Secoh, his own wings flaming, scrapped the day's plans. He had been diving with the Cliffside Dragons and also pulling out short of the ground. But now, instead of pulling out of his dive, he went down right to earth in the midst of the goblins, killing the goblin that was his objective, but also staying down there, striking right and left with his fiery wings—setting no fires, but killing several more goblins each time he struck out with both powerful wings.

  The goblins around him scattered again—but not far. They began to throw their spears at him from a distance. Already two of those spears had found lodging between the horny scales that helped to protect his back. Secoh, untouched by the magic in the spears, was clearly now in a dragon rage—that instinctive response to danger of his race, which as a mere marsh-dragon he had once believed he had lost, but found again when he had joined the old, stroke-crippled Smrgol in fighting the huge rogue dragon, Bryagh.

  "Secoh!" thought Jim, furiously. "Get back out of there! They'll end up killing you. Do what the other dragons are doing!"

  "M'lord!" came back Secoh's thought, triumphantly. "They did not fight at the Loathly Tower. I did! I'm different!"

  "Different enough to get killed—and I need you to pass on my orders to them. They'll all get carried away and want to come down, too—and all get killed faster than you will! Get up in the air again, Secoh! That's an order!"

  Dragons had no experience with orders given or taken. Jim held his breath against Secoh ignoring him. But Secoh had been too close to him and other humans too long.

  Heavily, he took to the air and rose towards the heights, shaking himself like a monstrous cat as he went, until the embedded spears finally fell from him one by one. Jim breathed out in relief. Dragons had a remarkable resistance to infection. Secoh's spear wounds should heal cleanly enough.

  But the space among the goblins where Secoh had been was already filled in, and there was no doubt now that both the horsemen and footmen were being pushed back towards the castle, faster and faster.

  It's my fault! thought Jim, feeling cold inside. I should have kept us all in the castle, in spite of the damned eagerness of all of them to get at the enemy. We might have stood them off there. An unusual, heavy snow might have come to drive them off—a dozen things! I let myself get carried away, too—

  But Hob was suddenly in front of him.

  "M'lord! M'lord—they need us. Can't we go now?"

  No! thought Jim, furiously. Not the blood of these on my conscience, too…

  However, now there was Angie before him and just behind Hob—who was now down on his small knees with thin arms held up in supplication.

  "Let them go if they want," Angie was saying, in a clear, strong voice. Behind her a little way was Carolinus, with a strange, hard look on his face.

  "Let them go!" echoed Carolinus.

  "Don't ever kneel to me!" snarled Jim, yanking Hob to his feet by one of the upraised arms. "Go then—all you hobs—if that's what you want!"

  Hob turned, and in one dive was into the fireplace and gone up the chimney. They heard his voice calling something brief but not understandable, and an answering wave of shrilling voices so numerous as to seem to make the castle tower itself vibrate.

  "Look!" said Angie.

  Jim, who had turned his eyes from what was outside the window, turned to it again.

  "Open the gates!" he cried as soon as the shrilling died down and his voice could carry clearly to the gatekeepers. The heavy windlasses that operated the two massive leaves of the gates began to creak, bringing them open, and the equally heavy bar was jerked up. But the stream of hobs were not waiting for a way to be opened. They were heading for the battlefield above gates and curtain wall alike, on wreaths of smoke, and with a brown,
thick cloud of it rolling across the ground before them.

  The cloud and the hobs thronging behind it came to the goblins and hid the goblin front lines. The hobs dived into the smoke and were lost to sight, and the smoke spread to hide all the area where fighting was going on. The shrilling of multitudes of high voices rose, those of hobs now added to those of the goblins. Together they rang in the heads of those in the castle, seeming to threaten deafness—certainly to those humans fighting on the ground.

  The footmen and horsemen emerged from the smoke, retreating, taking off their helms, and coughing or otherwise struggling for breath as they reached clear air. They streamed toward the opening gates. The dragons above, their wings still aflame, had with instinctive caution stopped diving, though they still circled overhead, interestedly watching.

  By now the great gates were wide open. The human fighters straggled in through them, swearing, still coughing and sneezing, their eyes streaming. When all were inside, the gates started to close, then stopped with a jerk.

  No order to stop them had come from Jim or anyone else in the tower.

  "Close the gates!" shouted Jim. "The hobs can come back in over them."

  The gates began to ponderously creak shut again.

  But there was no sign of the hobs retreating. The smoke still hid their battle with the goblins. Swirls of momentarily clear air showed fleeting glimpses of hob or goblin bodies in one heaving mass—clearly, under the smoke the battle was still continuing furiously. Jim, Angie and Carolinus continued to watch through their opened windows, and a faint, acrid odor from the smoke now reached even to their nostrils, as well.

  Jim found his teeth clamped close together.

  Hob! he called mentally, finally, desperately. But the hob who had always responded instantly to his calls all these years did not answer.

  Jim started to pace up and down, unable to stand still.

  "I can't stand this any longer!" he said at last. "I've got to see what's going on there!"

  "Jim! Don't you go there!"

  "Have to," he said between his teeth. "Aside from the fact I'm going crazy up here, they're part of our army, and I've got to find out how the hobs are doing. Unless magick can help me see from here, somehow. Carolinus, is there any way to—"

  "See through that smoke cloud from this distance?" said Carolinus. "None I know of. Get down in the cloud and I can help you see. You'll still have to look through the smoke, but you'll be able to see better than anyone else at the same time. But I don't know if I can let you go."

  "You can't stop me—" Jim began, and then felt something he had never known and never expected—he felt his mind seized. Not all of it—his thinking and his physical body was still under control—but some part of it that was concerned with his control of his magickal energy was now held in an immovable grip. He could not remember, nor even conceive, of how to handle the energy to put it to use. He was suddenly magickless.

  "There's a counter to this," said Carolinus, almost sadly. "You'll learn it once you're accepted into the Collegiate. But until then, you've no way to get loose. You're the surety for all the magick the Collegiate lent you through me. If you die, there's no hope of ever recovering it. If you live, you will pay it back somehow. It may take you a hundred years, unless you win the day here and save the King—in which case the debt will simply be written off. Otherwise…"

  Angie said nothing. But the expression on her face approved of what Jim was hearing. But in spite of the hold on him, Jim's wits were still operating.

  "On the other hand," he said between his teeth, "if you keep me here, when if I went down to see the situation, maybe I could make sure of saving the King after all—the blame'll be yours, not mine. Do you want to spend a hundred years yourself, paying it off?"

  "It wouldn't take me a hundred years," said Carolinus, with the sad note in his voice now plain, "even if the Collegiate didn't write off the debt in my case. Jim, believe me, it's my best judgment you don't go."

  "And mine!" said Angie.

  "For all that's sensible. Angie!" cried Jim, close to raving. "I'm warded! Nothing's going to happen to me!"

  "How do you know? That smoke is magic—hob magic. Maybe there's something about it that could make your ward vanish somehow! Something you can't imagine! Couldn't that be so, Carolinus?"

  "It's possible," said Carolinus.

  Jim found his jaws so tightly clamped that it was a struggle to part them enough to speak.

  "I've got to go!" he said.

  Angie said nothing. For a long moment, neither did Carolinus.

  "God help me," Carolinus said then—the second time Jim had ever heard him say anything religious, profane or otherwise. "If it comes to that, I'll pay off the debt myself. A human can only do what a human can do, using his best judgment, and in this case the judgment is yours, Jim."

  Jim felt himself released.

  "Good!" the word shot out of him.

  "You're only in half-armor, Jim!" said Angie—a last, desperate protest.

  Jim was suddenly in full armor, using his own magick, and belted and sworded.

  "Throw me my helmet. Where's my shield?"

  "I'll get them—" Angie was already in motion towards the lesser press, or cupboard, where Jim's armor and weapons were kept apart from their ordinary clothing. "But you've only a mail shirt on."

  "With a quilted vest under it, and a ward around me! I'll be all right, I tell you, Angie!"

  But she had already handed the helmet to Carolinus, who was raising it to place it on Jim's head, and Angie held up the heavy wooden shield for him. He ran his left arm through the nether strap and grasped the forestrap strongly in his fist.

  She kissed him hard. He stood, impatient to be off.

  "I love you," she whispered in his ear.

  "And I love you!" he growled. "Work what magick you can for me with the smoke, Carolinus!" he said. His mind was totally free—sharp and clear. A second later he had moved himself to the ground below in the very center of the battle.

  He found himself in turmoil, among hobs and goblins, involved with each other in no sort of order. The air was thick not merely with smoke but dust. The shrilling of high voices, here in the midst of them, was unbelievable, though it was becoming less even as he stood there. But Carolinus had indeed managed to give him better vision. Jim could see through the combination of smoke and dust for some twenty feet in every direction.

  "Hob!" he called—and realized that his voice did not even carry five feet in this racket. He magickally changed to his dragon-throat, lungs and vocal chords—adjusting his armor to contain the added size of his upper body—then changed his mind and made his body completely over into that of a dragon, and his human armor vanished.

  All the goblins within sight of him scrambled to get away. The hobs they had been fighting, with no chivalry at all, cut them down with their reaping hooks, from behind.

  For the first time Jim recognized how well-adapted for this fight the hobs had been. Clearly they had known their enemies better than he. Honed razor-sharp, and used as the hobs were using them, in a quick chopping motion, their blades slashed through the goblins' spears just behind the gleaming head. Then a second slash would follow the first, at a goblin throat or the back of a goblin neck. The curved, keen, reaping hooks were deadly at close quarters. Jim watched the fights around him as he searched for Hob—his hob.

  Plowing over the ground with the awkward gait of a dragon, he saw more than one hob decapitate a goblin spear, then, stepping closer to his enemy, with one more sweep of his hook, take off the head of that enemy.

  "Hob!' he kept calling. At the same time he was desperately sending out a mental summons. But there was no answer to either, and the thought that Hob could already be dead—his and Angie's hob—grew and became a coldness within him. Suddenly he wanted to kill goblins himself, with a very savage, personal desire that was like a hunger in him.

  He turned himself back into a human, in tribute to Hob. If he was going to
kill goblins, he would do it as Hob had gone to do it—as what he really was, and no other.

  For the first time he paid real attention to the shrilling around him. Both hobs and goblins were shouting at the tops of their voices as they fought and died. But now that he listened closely, he heard the difference between them.

  The essence of the noise they were both making was so similar that it almost seemed the same. But the rhythms of the two sets of voices were different. The goblins' shouting was an unending roar on a single note. But that of the hobs was more of an ululation—a continually repeated up and down between no more than two notes—strangely reminding him of the unforgettable Welsh anthem Men oj Harlech. Pride and triumph, and something unkillable, rang in it.

  If the hobs were losing, if their numbers had been cut down drastically since their first contact with the spears of the goblins, the sound of their voices still had that strange ring of victory in it. If they were dying, they were dying in some effort that brought them great satisfaction as they fell. As Brian might have said on a like occasion, this was a battle that in itself was worth dying for.

  "By God!" said Jim to himself, unheard in the tumult around him. If the hobs could do it, he could! He would find his own hob, alive or dead, and stand over his body, killing any goblins who attacked him, until in their numbers they put him down, too. What was it that Hob's dream of his own end had been—that he would be found with a ring of his foes killed about him? Jim could do that much for him.

  It was a mad decision on his part, like something from a legend. But, by Heaven, he would make it come true for Hob. Watching Hob's kind at work, he had learned how to fight the poisoned spears. But it was not time to stop searching yet. Dead or just dying, Hob must still be somewhere here under this cloud of smoke.

  Jim forged forward into the melee about him, still more occupied with finding Hob than killing goblins. They, on their part, finding a human still alive, but discovering that spears that got past his shield and sword either slid off or broke on contact with the ward encasing him, mostly dodged out of his path as he went. So he searched through the melee… almost as if he moved among shadowy figures in a world of noise, smoke and dust.